Ivory by Steve Merrifield Read Free Book Online Page B

being a student
learning his art again he had managed to reproduce a sketch of the
face on his canvas. It still wasn’t an entirely convincing likeness
of the face that haunted him from his memory. He hoped that the
fluidity and forgiving nature of paint might make it easier for him
to recreate Ivory’s face.
    He pulled out a tub of acrylic paints from the bottom of the
cupboard. Oils would take too long to dry and would impede the
frenetic channelling of creativity that would be taking place as he
tried to conjure her into being. He added a retarder agent to some
water to slow down the drying process of the acrylics so that he
could continually mix, layer and sculpt the paint alla primer on the
canvas .
    He lined up
tubes of Golden paints, a variety of colours that he was sure he
would need and selected a range of Kolinsky sable-hair brushes to
be close at hand. He closed his eyes. Slowed his breathing and
remembered. He remembered the glittering rain. The chalk and
charcoal sketch of the road drawn from the darkness by his car’s
headlights. The only visual memory of hitting Ivory was one smeary
frame of her, overexposed in his lights with her arms raised in
defence, blurred into angel wings with the motion. His hand
trembled with the memory of the accident but his desire to see that
face again steadied him. His brush went to work and he quickly
layered a dark brown background around the crudely sketched face,
automatically bringing her stark contrast with the world into
being.
    Ivory had been
in his mind for much of the day, not surprising considering the
shock of the car accident, but despite her distinction the exact
details of her face were frustratingly out of reach to him. He had
caught the bus to university that morning, but had broken his
journey with a visit to the garage to inspect the damage to his
car. It was a write-off. It was an old banger of a runabout so he
hadn’t taken out full comprehensive insurance. Now they would
either have to dip into their savings or have to get by with the
one car for a while. More stress.
    In the clarity of daylight the damage was frightening. The
thick metal of the bonnet was creased like tin-foil around the
impact point. The whole front of the car was an inverted curve as
if he had slammed into a wide pillar of granite and not the fragile
frame of a girl. The damage puzzled Martin. Ivory should have been
a contorted bloody mess of twisted shattered limbs, not a sleeping
beauty tipped from a glass case. He frowned dismissively at
himself, but could feel the tension of his uncertainty affecting
the ease of his movement and the grace of his brush.
    His
brush paused.
    He thought of
their parting moment at the hospital and that smile, and tried to
conjure her face from the shades of memory that seemed to dissolve
under the light of his concentration. In his memory she emerged
from the cubicle with Ebony and the purpled blotches and the thin
cut were gone. His memory was losing detail or he was being
impatient and skipping details to get to the smile that would
follow. Yet with this moment replayed he was sure her healed
appearance was a fact he was only now realising.
    Martin shook
his head dismissively and countered the momentary doubt with
confident strokes of his brush. Yesterday had been a long and tough
day: a full day of lecturing, organising the department for the
scrutiny of the campus during the open evening and the stress of
the awards party. Then the accident. It was hardly surprising that
his memory was playing tricks on him.

    Martin walked
up the path to his home with his head cowed against the fall of the
rain, and keyed open the front door. He shed the rain from his
green wax jacket with a few shrugs of his shoulders and shakes of
his arms and deadlocked the door behind him. He placed his keys
upon the balustrade, took off his coat and kicked off his shoes
wearily. He had walked more today with his public transport commute
than he had done in some time. His aching