Blue and Green

The first time I saw you was at the birthday party of a mutual friend. I couldn’t stop looking at you. I’d never seen a redhead with one blue eye and one green eye, and such white skin. I was captivated. As a visual artist your natural colouring was fascinating to me, so it was only subsequent to that discovery that I noticed how beautiful you were.

For the rest of the party I positioned myself so that wherever I stood, whoever I was talking to, I could see you. And you never once looked at me. Eventually people started making their goodbyes and I could bear it no longer.

I walked up to you and said, “Hi, I’m Peter Wadsworth, and I’m a visual artist. I’ve been watching you all evening. Can I paint you?”

You looked me up and down, slowly, taking your time before replying, and then, raising one eyebrow, you said, “Do you want to paint a picture of me, or do you want to paint my body?”

I nearly replied “both,” but thought better of it. Forcing a smile I said, “Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I’d like to paint a portrait of you. Or a full length, and probably both. In my studio, at a time of your choosing.”

You looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Clothed, or nude?”

I nearly replied “both” once again, but decided to play it safe. “Clothed,” I said. “Clothes of your choosing.”

“I’ve heard of you, Peter Wadsworth,” you replied, “and I’ve even seen some of your paintings. I would be honoured to be painted by you – however you would like to do it. My name is Deidre Varsi.”

You held out your hand and I took it. A jolt of electricity ran between us, and I blinked. So did you. I handed you my card, and said, “Call me. You can come at any time.”

“I will, and I will,” you replied, and you smiled. It was the first of many smiles you gave me, and it was a revelation. Your blue and green eyes lit up, your red hair glowed, and your pure white skin radiated a pearly iridescence.

Your image and your colours impressed themselves so vividly on my mind that they were still there when you rang me the next morning, and yet still there when you came round to see me that same afternoon.

After a long photoshoot in which I captured you from every possible angle and in every possible mood, I felt that I knew your body thoroughly, although I hadn’t even touched it. Then we experimented with poses for the painting. Should you stand, sit, crouch, bend, lie down, hold onto something, and so on. We chose sitting.

And so began the series of paintings that made my reputation and my fortune.

For we didn’t stop with one painting and one pose. Oh no. We carried on and on. You became known as the most famous model in the world of modern art, and I became known as the most famous painter.

We became so close as painter and model that it was a natural step for you to say, “And shall we do that nude painting now?” While my affirmative answer was intended in the spirit of artistic exploration, we immediately became lovers.

I know that it is often said that when you are dying your life flashes before you, and as I am indeed dying, my life is indeed flashing before me. However, I refuse to let this moment rush by as if it was of no significance. For it was at this moment that my life really began.

Our love was like no other. What had originally attracted me to you were your colours, and their power over me grew and grew. Your green eye excited me to storms of passion, while your blue eye touched my deepest soul. You were ever two souls in one, and you met and nourished those same two souls in me.

Do you remember lying outside in the garden on those warm August nights, watching the shooting stars? And looking for colour in the starry sky, in the depths of space? The red of Mars, the blue of Rigel, and the green – alas, we never found any green stars. So your own green eye remained my own true green star.

I had painted your eyes a hundred times, in paintings that filled our house, and these were my constant companions whenever you were away. Your mother was often ill, and you were regularly called home to care for her. The very last time this happened you were away for weeks, so I poured my love for you into portraits I continued to paint from memory.

Until, at last, the phone call came.

“I’m at the airport,” you said. “I came back. Because of you.”

Dropping everything I drove to the airport car park. It was a maze of tunnels and walkways, and once parked I couldn’t wait to get to the terminal. I was being careful and sensible, but was still a little distracted by your imminent arrival, so that when the traffic light at the crossing turned green and I walked across, I wasn’t paying attention to the driver who was driving too fast to stop in time, and who hit me, knocking me into the air and across the road.

Which is why I am lying here in hospital, seeing my entire life flash before my eyes.

The part of me that knows I am dying also knows that you are sitting by my side, holding my hand. It also knows that I am in a cold, clinical room, connected by tubes and wires to a machine with a lot of flashing red lights on it.

And I desperately wish that I could see you properly once more before I go. That we could touch noses as we have done so many times before, and I could look so deeply into your eyes that I would swim in their colour. That I could kiss that face I have so often painted, that I know better than my own. But I can’t. Through my half-closed eyes I can see you crying, and crying, and crying, while I am crying silently inside, too.

And then without any warning, without any possibility of saying goodbye to you, I slip out of my body. I drift upwards, through the many floors of the hospital, through the clouds and through the sky, until I accelerate into space itself!

I admit to feeling a thrill as I see the shooting stars all around me, and I stretch my arms out in front of me as I navigate my way through the planets and out of the Solar System, quite literally reaching for the stars! How clear they are! How crisp! How shiny, how dazzling! I begin to hear their voices – the stars are calling me, drawing me on and up. I can’t hear their words yet, but I can hear their music.

In space there is no atmosphere to cloud the brilliance of the colours of the stars, so now I can see them in all their splendour! Red, orange, yellow, white, and all possible shades of blue! The painter I was in this life wallows in this wealth of intense colour! No-one on Earth can ever know the true glory of the colours of the heavens as I am seeing them now!

I start to sing a wordless halleluiah of praise when I realise that something is missing – there is no green! There is no green in the heavens! There are no green stars! Bewildered, I scan the cosmos desperately. How can there be harmony in the heavens without green? I suddenly miss it profoundly. On Earth there is plenty of green. All of the colours in the heavens can be found on Earth – and one more, one that doesn’t exist from one end of the Milky Way to the other. Does that mean that Earth is more harmonious than the heavens?

For extreme cold and extreme heat, for extreme light and extreme darkness, there is nowhere better than space. But for warmth, for comfort, for balance, for harmony – there is nowhere better than Earth! Earth, the source, the centre, the focal point of the colour green for the entire universe!

I try to look back at Earth, but the forces which are pulling me upwards are very powerful. With the greatest of efforts I turn myself around, and look back at where I have come from.

I’ve travelled a huge distance in no time at all, but I can still see Earth. There, far, far away, is a spot of – blue and green! The blue of the seas and the green of the land glow in the reflected light of the sun, and speak to me of the one person in my life who was the living harmony of blue and green – Deidre! My own Deidre!

Can I live in this universe without her?

No. I can’t. Not yet, whatever any high and mighty being might say. I will decide my own destiny, regardless of what any God might decree, and I have decided that it is not yet my time to leave Earth.

So I turned round. It was like swimming against the tide, because that’s exactly what it was. The cosmic tide was drawing me away from Earth and towards the stars and beyond, but it was not my way. Not any longer. I needed harmony. A harmony that included green. That allowed green and blue – and all the other colours – to co-exist, to balance each other. The harmony that Deidre had lived all her life, and that she had given to me.

Blue and green.

Together.

That was my guide.

So I swam and I swam against the tide, ignoring the siren call of the stars, and focused on the beautiful, glowing, colourful ball of Earth. I reached the Solar System, I dodged the planets and our beautiful moon, and I began to sense the warmth of the body I had left behind me just a few seconds ago. If only it would wait for me! If only it would still live! If only I could reach it before it cooled down!

I plunged through the upper floors of the hospital building, and crashed into my body. I forced myself into it, like squeezing into some ill-fitting old clothes, and found that my senses still worked.

Through my half open eyes I saw the red lights on the machines turn to green - blessed green! - one by one. Nurses appeared and started running around. With my hand I squeezed yours, and held on tight. With my ears I heard you stop crying.

I took a breath, and, looking into those two wonderful, beautiful eyes I had crossed half a universe to see, I licked my dry lips and croaked, “I came back. Because of you.”