At the Edge of Summer

As far as Glasgow was from the war, I saw both ends of it every day. Buchanan Street and Queen Street stations teemed with raw soldiers from all corners of Scotland, scrubbed and hopeful. Glasgow Central brought them back, worn, weary, wary. There were whispers that some of the trains unloaded their cargo far from the center of the city, where no one would be disturbed by the sight of gurneys and bandages. Scotland’s brave soldiers could appear nothing less.

Mostly, though, the streets were full of women. Brisk, serious nurses, ruddy shipbuilders and munitions workers, black-draped widows, the occasional Belgian or French refugee. Every day I passed by St. Aloysius’ Church, full of women and their quiet contemplation. Though I wasn’t Catholic, sometimes I joined them.

I was so far from the war, yet I felt so near to it with each person I passed in the street, with each troop train waiting at the station, with each pasted newspaper headline, with each kilted soldier, desperate couple, handkerchief pressed to eyes. The breathless, headlong rush of war, brought straight to Scotland.

I kept that smudged map in my pocket, the one I’d torn from the newspaper in Saint-Louis. I kept it to remind myself that the war was just as close for me. Somewhere in France was a soldier I still thought of.

—

I never knew independence could feel so lonely.

In Glasgow, I didn’t have sand or sunshine or the smells of coffee and spices. I didn’t have blue skies stretching upwards forever. I didn’t have companionable quiet at the supper table. I didn’t have Grandfather.

I did have a narrow bed in a rooming house, a crooked desk too far away from the window, a gas ring that never completely warmed my kettle. The other female students, those fresh from under their fathers’ thumbs, rejoiced. “A tiny flat?” they’d exclaim to one another. “But it’s my tiny flat.” The only thing that made it mine was the wooden mask hanging on the wall, the one I’d brought back from Mauritania. I’d been to Africa and back. The other women had only made it as far as Glasgow. Listening at the edges of these conversations, I felt lonelier for not understanding.

My first day at the School of Art, I was bewildered. The clean, echoing halls, the well-ordered studios, the big, bright rooms and their high ceilings. I’d been used to painting in the souks of North Africa, strapping an easel onto the back of my bicycle and mixing pigments in the jostle of the crowd as the colors presented themselves. I’d brushed sand from my canvas and picked blown grass from the paint on my makeshift palette. I’d crouched on the banks of the Senegal River, sculpting brown clay. Now, I held my leather case to my chest as I made my way through the pillared front hall of the school, wondering how art could be created in such a sterile place. I wondered how I’d ever find the warmth and color and life that I had on my travels.

I thought I could find it in the students. Young women flocked the halls in excited, chattering bunches, exhilarated at being on their own, at being here, at walking the halls of artists. Some were so young. Their dresses high-necked, their hair braided down their backs, they couldn’t have been long out of the schoolroom. I could scarcely keep up with their nattering. I followed them, soaking in their radiance, wishing I’d had even one girlfriend in my life to know how it was done. Once in the basement corridor, a girl turned to me, mistaking me for someone in her group, and asked whether I agreed that the Artists Football Club was smashing. By the time I accidentally responded in French, she had already moved on down the hallway.

I was no better with the male students. All I’d had for comparison was Luc. Well, Luc and my grandfather. Both quiet, introspective, absorbed. I didn’t find that here. The few male students left in Glasgow were boys—restless, impatient boys. They always kept half a watch out for the news, waiting to see if they’d be called for their turn. I couldn’t blame them, I suppose. With nearly everyone else over the age of eighteen in the army, they wanted to be next. The older students were those turned down at the recruitment bureau, and they kept their heads down, hiding a weak heart or spirit. I couldn’t talk to them, any of them, not when they made me think of someone else, someone who hadn’t escaped the army.

I wrote to Madame when I arrived in Glasgow. I knew she’d be proud, and of course I wanted news of Luc. I tried to sound casual, as though I’d simply misplaced Luc like an errant glove, not that I was so wracked with worry every night that I fell asleep praying for him. I asked where I could write to him, as I had so much to tell.

But she never wrote back, though I tried and tried. I kept watching that map I’d cut out of that newspaper in Saint-Louis, watching the blots of ink march across the landscape, far too near to Mille Mots. Was she even receiving my letters? Was I receiving hers?

While I sat in the still life studio one day, early for class and tracing the lines on my crumpled map, a girl came up behind. “Have a sweetheart over there?” she asked.

I could hardly remember how his voice sounded and, while I had no trouble sketching out the boyish face I knew—all angles and dark curls—I didn’t know how the older Luc looked, hardened by war. “A sweetheart?” I folded the newspaper clipping. “No, a friend. A friend I miss very much.”

I wanted him to be there. I wanted him to be on the other end of an envelope to share this with me, the way he had been. This, art school, was something he’d always wanted for me, harder than he ever wanted something for himself. This was ours, and I wanted, more than anything, to write to him all about it.

I’d tell Luc how hard it was. Not just the loneliness—that, I knew he’d understand—but the lessons.

I thought it would be easy. Really, I did. I had training, right there at the table of Monsieur Claude Crépet. I’d had further lectures via letter, once every few months, on my technique. I’d sketched and painted across continents. I’d spent years feeling my way through the learning. I’d had a mother who could turn tables into fairy tales, a father who could make buildings rise with pencils and measurements, and a grandmother who had captured a marriage on canvas. Art was in my blood and in my fingertips.

Half of the young women here were like me, experienced, taught at art academies or under private drawing masters. They also carried well-worn cases. The others, hopeful and untutored, their pencils freshly sharpened, their brushes new, I was sure would be the ones fumbling. Little did I know that I’d fumble, too.

Miss Ross, you cannot hold the pencil as though you were writing, or, When you insist on keeping your paper at that angle, you smudge with your palm, every time, or, While arranging your palette, you mustn’t put raw sienna beside raw umber. There is an order to these things, Miss Ross. The well-trained students never made these errors. The untrained were taught from the start how not to. But I’d had one summer of proper lessons and then years of filling in the rest by myself. I had to be corrected and instructed all over again. I hated it.

If I’d had an address, I could’ve written to Luc about all of that. The embarrassment of being told that, yet again, I was doing it wrong. The frustration of learning a second time what I’d already learned once. The isolation of being the only one so singled out.

Or I could have written to him about the parts that weren’t all that bad. Of sketching a live model for the first time, and then a live nude model. Of learning modeling in the dusty, clay-streaked sculpture studio. Of putting on that crisp white artists’ smock the very first time and seeing it satisfyingly spotted with paint at the end of the lesson. Of being, every single day, surrounded by art. Luc was right; that, I loved.

Until I could find him, until I could write to him, I’d keep all of that tight against my chest. I didn’t want anyone else to see these little joys before Luc did. If he did. So I tucked away my disappointments and I tucked away each scrap of happiness as I found it. I focused on my hard-earned place at the School of Art, a place I knew Luc would’ve envied. Every picture I drew, every sculpture I smoothed, I did it for him. Even without being there, Luc was always my muse.