Page 30 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms
Johannes took up his pencil.The nub had gone a little blunt, so he leant over the small bin beside his desk and flicked shavings into it with his penknife.
‘It’s exciting to make a start on the design proper.Your father won’t mind if we begin without him?’
Florence leant back in her chair as she regarded him.‘He was emphatic, even through his delirium.He wants you to start.’
‘Start.Yes.Start the plan.’He spun the pencil.Maybe it wasn’t sharp enough?Perhaps it could be a little more pointed.And the rest of his kit.He hadn’t checked his ink supplies, or the lead for his compass.And what if they needed new watercolours…
‘Is there a problem?’Florence asked.
Johannes jolted.He hadn’t noticed her cross the room, and now she stood beside him, looking down with a slight smirk.He tapped at the page with his pencil.Raised it so that the graphite hovered above the parchment.Grand.Practical.In budget.A statement.First place.
‘I can’t do it!’He dropped his pencil onto the desk.It clattered against the wood, then rolled down the sloped surface and clacked to the floor.
‘Ican’t do it.Youcan.’
‘That’s not what… I know I sound trite, but… but what if I muck up the ideas?What if it’s not good enough?What if, once we submit, they decide to go in a different direction and then we’ll have lost our opportunity?What if we go to all this effort and no one likes it?’There, he’d said it.Had given voice to the crawling fear that needled its way under his skin every time he sat at the desk.To the trepidation he felt when all the failures piled up greater than that single success with the water fountain.
Florence nudged his side.‘Make room for me.’
He moved until half his arse teetered on the edge of the chair and stretched his leg to brace himself.Florence, considerably daintier than himself, crammed into the space he had made.He shuffled over a little more, and she wiggled to find her own balance.Thigh to thigh, side by side, so close he could kiss her…
‘You think too much.’She spoke low through a smile as she reached across him to pick up her favourite tool—the line pen.She adjusted the width of the prongs.As she leant across to dip it in the ink, the scent of her, orange oil and chaff soap, coffee and just a hint of exertion, filled his air.‘Just draw.Draw like you’re already a success.Use your pen like they already love you.If I had a seat at the table, that’s what I would do.’
Florence swept a smooth line along the length of the parchment.Glossy black, shimmering and certain, it sank into the page as if it desired to possess it.A few more lines, and a kerb took shape.The edge of the building.A few squiggles and a thatch of foliage emerged, then stretched off the edge of the page.‘You want to draw the complete thing.You want to know all of it and just plonk it down in one afternoon.To understand everything.But your notes are just those.Notes.’She sketched out a few more lines, a door and windows.‘Start with one stroke of the pen, and the next will follow.You always start with the view from above.What if you try something a bit different?Instead of starting with the walls, what if we start with the people?’She sketched a little more to draw a figure on the page, then another.Johannes reached under the table and retrieved his pencil.Following her lines, he added in a door, a little bigger than her people in the street needed, but tall enough to impress them.He swept detail between the bare bones of her marks, filled in a window, tall and narrow with small panes of glass, which would be more economical to replace if they broke.Florence’s pen chased his sketches, and line by line, the shape of the offices for the New Water Company took form on the page.
A knock echoed along the hall, followed by an enquiring call.‘Mrs Murray?’
Florence swivelled.She steadied herself against the desk, then pushed herself up.She handed the pen to him.‘Make mistakes in ink.Make lots of them.We have plenty of paper.’
Johannes took the pen.His heart had slowed as they worked, but at the brush of her fingertips, those fingertips that had traced and scratched at his body, that he remembered in the most inopportune moments, it began to race again.Was he even foolinghimselfthat he was rid of her?One moment, she was his foil, the source of his frustration, and the next, a fraction of himself.His other half.
‘Start with the people,’ he muttered to himself.He sketched out a few shapes in proportion to the doors and windows.Etched in stairs to lead to the entrance, then a lintel.A space for a stone that would carry the coat of arms and the opening year.
What was their journey, once these people crossed the threshold?Johannes angled the paper to find a clean corner.The entrance would be used by engineers and officials, people making decisions about pipes and sanitation, about which parts of the city needed reticulation and which didn’t.They should feel important, but not too important.What would Ruskin do?How would Morris remind them of their purpose?They needed to remember that people relied on themandpaid their wages from their pockets.
Johannes sketched, let his fingers twist and adjust, scrawled over a line he shouldn’t have placed, and tried again.
He scratched his next few lines a little more slowly.He tried to focus on the people on the page, but the low hum of voices from outside—Florence and a man—kept rolling into the room.He put down his pen and crossed to the office door.
‘… he’s not a young man.A simple cold can take its toll.’
‘But he is recovering.Will he be able to leave his bed this week?’
The man—the doctor who had visited last week—shook his head.‘He needs rest, and lots of it.’He clasped his hands before him.‘He is worried about you.He wants me to talk with my friend, the surgeon.He is most emphatic for a man so ill.’
‘We do not have the surgeon’s fee.And I hadn’t decided if I was going to—’
‘Mrs Murray, if I may be frank.I am a doctor.I understand life and death and pain and healing.The progression of all of it can be slowed but never stopped.One day, your parents will catch a cold or take a tumble, and they won’t recover.None of us like to think about it, but it is what happens.You need to be practical.Your father is.This is your best chance—’
‘Of being independent.’Florence rubbed at her brow.‘I know.’
‘I was going to say, of staying out of an invalids’ home once your parents are gone.’
All of Johannes froze as his blood turned to ice.When the doctor took his leave, he hurried back to his seat and took up his pen as if he hadn’t been eavesdropping.
Florence returned to her father’s desk in silence.And for the first time, Johannes looked at her.Really looked.Not at her curves, her smooth neck, her hair like burnished copper.Against the backdrop of the window, he could only see her silhouette.He’d studied enough figures and forms, transposed them onto the page as he learnt how to draw them.And while he may not have been able to forge a sentence at speed, he could read a body and interrogate its stability like he was assessing footings.She stood a little off centre, always.At times, her deep breaths were a little more laboured, and on some days, like today, her hair was set in simpler styles.Most likely the days the maid didn’t come in, and she had to dress herself.
‘You are meant to be sketching,’ she muttered, as she lowered herself into the seat.
