The Gates of Balawat, Chapter 6
Ella makes a bold decision and prepares to takes a big risk.
Ella had to make sure her ‘many worlds’ theory was right. She sat on the bench in the little foyer at the National Museum’s back entrance. She fiddled with her phone for a bit then, looking bored, let her hand flop down by her side. Surreptitiously she stuck a tiny sticker, a little red dot, just under the lip of the bench. No one would see it, but if she sat here again it would be easy for her to slip her had down to feel for the dot. If it was there, then it was the exact same bench and the exact same universe, but if it wasn’t…
She stood and made her way along her habitual route to the Assyrian gallery, periodically stopping to place a telltale somewhere hidden. The information plates on the walls were slightly raised so it was easy to slip a sticker behind them. She put them behind wedged-open doors, on litter bins, on chairs or benches.
Finally, having taken the long way round, she stood in front of Ashurnasirpal II, his ringleted beard all primped and preened and faintly ridiculous. For the first time, she read the short history pinned to the wall next to him and was surprised to see that he had been responsible for commissioning the Gates. She stuck a tiny sticker behind his plaque, then made her way back through the museum until she found herself on the right side, her side, of the Gates.
She checked for her telltale, finding it just where she left it on the back edge of a nearby case. So this was her world. She wondered for a moment if there was a world somewhere with another Ella, also sticking stickers and experimenting to see if they stayed where they were put. But she’d never bumped into herself, or even seen herself in the distance, so she had to assume that her own reality was a fixed point to which she could return, no matter how many times she passed through the Gates. Certainly she’d never noticed any odd changes in her own reality when she returned to it. Either way, she had to hold on to the idea that her world was firmly anchored, because any other thought was terrifying.
She took a deep breath and stepped through the Balawat Gates. Ashurnasirpal II was still there, but her telltale was not, nor any of the others she had put in place. She made her way through the museum and out the main exit. In this world there were no roadworks, so it didn’t take her long walk round to the rear of the museum. She sat on her bench, let her hand feel for the characteristic papery roughness of the sticker and found nothing. She searched the museum. None of her stickers were where she’d put them.
❦
“Did you go to art school?” Ella asked.
“No,” Roo replied. “Never got the chance. You?”
“Goldsmiths.”
“So, what’s your plan?” he asked, stirring his coffee as they chatted in the Great Courtyard café.
“Well, draw more, keep an applying for jobs, try to get some freelance work. Maybe travel a bit.” She startled herself with that idea. She hadn’t had a proper holiday in years, having preferred to either just work through and top up her meagre coffers, or laze about at home. A change of scene wouldn’t go amiss.
“Travel? Where?”
“Italy, where else?” Ella smiled as Roo’s face lit up at the idea. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“Hell, yeah! I’d be off like a shot. Just think, you could do the Grand Tour!”
“Now, there’s an plan,” Ella said, thoughtfully. “I suppose Venice and Rome would be essentials.”
“Florence and Naples too. And what about France? You’d have to do Paris. And Geneva in Switzerland.”
“This is starting to sound a bit expensive.”
“But what a great experience, though! And really, why not? Is there anything… anyone keeping you here?”
Ella fell silent for a moment, contemplative. “No. No, I suppose there really isn’t.”
❦
Ella picked up the acoustic guitar that she had barely started to learn to play and gave it a final strum. It was a little out of tune and she was tempted to fix that and have a noodle, but she had no time to spare. She put it in its case and leant it by the door to take back to the shop she had bought it from. They dealt in second hand guitars as well as new. She could probably get more for it if she sold it online, but she just wanted to get this over with, before she changed her mind.
Her few belongings were slowly being sorted into two piles: one rather large heap for sale and one very small pile for packing. Of course, she still had a load of stuff in her mother’s attic, but she hadn’t looked through it in years and if she didn’t need it now, she wouldn’t need it later either. It could stay there until… She stopped that train of thought, not entirely keen on where it might go.
❦
“Are you Andrew?” Ella asked, sitting down by the man with the compelling smile and the pale blue eyes.
“Yes, but everyone calls me Drew,” he replied.
“We met a while back,“ Ella said, “though you might not remember.”
Drew looked confused for a moment, as he always did, but was soon smiling again. “I’m sorry, I have to admit that I don’t remember.”
“I’m Ella.” She smiled. “I’m sorry to have been nosy, but I saw your drawing and had to say how much I love it!”
Drew blushed slightly. “Thank you! It’s really kind of you to say so.”
Ella drew her sketchbook out and said, “Do you have a webcomic online?”
“No,” Drew said, “I’ve thought about it, but…”
“You should just go for it. A friend of mine,” she suppressed a snort, “publishes one, and it’s been really good for him. For his profile.”
“Yeah, I was thinking it was something I ought to just get on with. Are you a comics artist yourself?”
“No, no.” She fanned the pages of her sketchbook so he could glimpse her work. “I’m much more traditional.”
“Say, would you like to get a coffee? The stuff they sell in the Courtyard Café is actually quite good!”
Ella smiled, looking forward to a long chat.
❦
“I’m really sorry,” Ella said, handing Caroline a sealed envelope.
“What’s this?”
“I’ve been given the chance to do the Grand Tour,” Ella said, hoping she sounded authentic.
“The Grand Tour? The actual Grand Tour?”
“Well, sort of. My dad’s great aunt died and left a ton of money. I didn’t even know she existed.”
“I didn’t think you were in touch with your father?”
“Uh, yeah, this was all, er, sorted out by my brother.”
“Oh? How is he?”
“Yeah, fine. Anyway, so yeah, I’m off!”
“Wow! Where are you going?”
“Paris, Geneva, Florence, Rome, erm,” she stumbled, but Caroline didn’t seem to notice.
“That sounds utterly fantastic! Lucky you! Well, you know there will always be a job here for you when you come back, right?”
“Aw, thanks!”
“You’ll get some great stuff for your portfolio, but I’ll really miss you, Ella.”
“I’ll miss you too! But, y’know, sometimes you have to make a sacrifice for something that’s important to you. You have to take the risk, because if you didn’t, you’d never forgive yourself.”
“You do, it’s true. But a trip to Italy doesn’t feel like that much of a sacrifice!”
Ella looked confused for a moment, then got a grip on the conversation and smiled at Caroline. “I suppose not,” she said. “I’m just not quite sure how it will go. I’ve never travelled quite so far on my own before!”
“You’re a sensible woman, Ella. You’ll be fine!”
❦
“Do you draw professionally?” Tony asked, his hand resting on his sketchbook.
“No,“ she replied. “I wish I did, but I’ve not been able to get an illustration job. Working in art shop was the next best thing.”
“Was? You don’t any more?”
“Oh, well, yes, I do, for a while. I think.” She was starting to feel as if a decision had been made by her subconscious, but her conscious self wasn’t quite ready to voice it yet. “You?”
“Me too.”
“You work in an art shop?”
He laughed, a soft laugh. “No, I meant I can’t find a job either. I get a bit of freelance work sometimes, but l mostly stack shelves.”
This time it was Ella’s turn lo laugh. “Not easy is it? Breaking in.”
Tony snorted with derision. “That is possibly the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard. I bet it’s just fine and dandy if you’ve been to St Martin’s or Goldsmiths or something. All that networking with famous artist lecturers.”
“Oh, I can promise you it’s not like that. I mean, some people get their breaks at art school, but it tends to favour the, er, the extroverts.”
“You went to…?”
“Goldsmiths.”
“Well, you seem pretty outgoing to me!”
Ella wanted to say that he was a special case, that she’d come to know him pretty well by now, having met him, or versions of him so many times that all her awkwardness had evaporated. Her challenges now were not around shyness, but around sounding authentic as she held the same opening conversation she’d had dozens of times. Once they’d got past the obvious, she tried to steer things to topics that were new to her.
She already knew about his childhood, how dicey his relationship with his father was, but how close he was to his sisters. Although they were younger than him, they took as much of a maternal role as they could get away with. She had initially felt jealous of that, given the distance — both figuratively and literally — between her and her own brother, but she’d worked through it. And she’d figured out how to talk about her own family without revealing too much of the anger she felt towards them.
She knew about his taste in comics, their shared love of the greats and shared distaste for the schlocky end of the superhero genre, though he had managed to convince her that some of those comics were better than others. She knew about his wish to own an Irish wolf hound, his penchant for cold press coffee, and the difficulty he had getting up in the morning. She knew that he wasn’t freaked out by her family situation, didn’t think that she was weird for working so hard, shared her taste in films and music, and liked her work.
She knew she wanted him to get to know her as well as she now knew him.
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