Chapter 7
The next day Jenny was back to the watermill early in the morning. It was still dark and the sun would refuse to look down on them for several more hours. Even the light drizzle floated with the greatest reluctance towards the ground. If it found anything else on its way down, like say Jenny, it would instead attack her with rabid fury crawling beneath her warm cloths biting the warmth out of her in tiny chunks. Jenny was not a morning person and this morning was doing everything to convince her that her instincts were right. She should have stayed in bed. Maybe adding one or two extra blankets only to be sure. But this was a morning she was not going to miss. Adrian had told her that today would be the day where they would get an excavator to dig a trench to connect the watermill to the circulatory system of modern civilisation. He had told her that he could take care of all of that. He knew who to talk to to get an official connection. Someone who would be happy to just hand over the work to them instead of having to do it themselves. He just needed a certified copy of the document with which the city had passed the responsibility over the mill over to Jenny. As much as Jenny would have loved to stay away and wait for others to take care of the disaster that was the watermill she had decided against it. That was the cowards way. A road that she had been taking for all to long. While she could not do the work herself, this was still her plan and her battle and just because everything seemed to be conspiring against her did not mean she would back down. Fuck that.
So she stood there a lonely figure standing in the cold illuminated by a soft glow of sympathy light she got from the street-lamps who stood a way back on the civilised part of the street, who by their nature could not look right at her but at the very least send a glimmer of solidarity towards her.
First she heard the call of the excavator. A deep rumbling growl. Then she felt the vibration of the street as it started to resonate with the machines power over the earth. Then at last she saw the lights appear down the street, the many shining eyes of a metal dragon. This was a machine that knew it was a beast. Followed by another car carrying his loyal subjects with it.
The excavator came to a halt not far from the watermill where Stu had pointed out the water line. It turned its spotlight eyes towards the mill, which just stood its ground as it had for so many centuries now.
From behind the glare of the beasts eyes Adrian appeared.
"Good morning ma'am." he said.
"Good morning Adrian." she said nodding. "When can we start?"
"Pretty much immediately. The city needs to see your papers, the a signature and we can start. During the excavation Stu'll check the basement. I'll do a detailed check of the building so that I can brief our statics man when he arrives here this afternoon. And Dan's sleeping in."
"Sounds good to me." Jenny said. "So who needs my signature."
Out of the dark appeared a creature from the city tribe. This one was different to the one in the city office. A strange hybrid that worked half the day inside an office the other half out in the body of the city proper, maintaining it the city according to its own plans. It followed the ritual of greeting and pleasantry. Examined the papers Jenny gave to it in the most cursory way. Jenny wondered if they new it was real by contact, they had developed special sense to see if it was the real thing or they maybe just didn't care. And how comes the city can give a part of itself into her care and yet not know that it did so?
"... and there and there." said the creature from the city tribe to Jenny offering her a pen. She stared at it for a second noticing that she was being presented with a clipboard holding the official documents for her to sign. The parts helpfully marked with highlighter by the creature in front of her.
"Oh. Yes of course." she said, putting her signature where it was required thus sealing the contract. As she had done so the thing from the city double checked, nodded and then a smile flickered on its face revealing a the friendly face of a middle aged man.
"You've got a good team working for you here." he said. "Adrian and his boys always do great work. I for one am glad to see that you got this watermill. There are many beautiful places her in the city that just get ignored. We keep telling the higher ups that we have to be doing something about it. To preserve sites like these. But it is always to expensive." the man shook his head. "You're doing good work here." he nodded. "Adrian told me about the situation with the basement. I remember that Sutcliffe was complaining about that botched job. So if you need any help with you'll know where to find me."
"er... yes. Thank you." Jenny said. The man from the city said goodbye to Adrian and disappeared into the darkness beyond the excavator beast.
"So about that lawyer." Adrian said.
"We're working on it." Jenny said as the excavator came to life again and moved into position to bite the first chunk out of the earth.
The morning crawled along at snails pace. Seeing the excavator doing its work quickly went from being impressive to being quite boring. There was a certain meditative charm to it which was the last thing that Jenny needed, now that the adrenalin of the last few days was finally ebbing away it was replaced by a deep fatigue. She went inside to see if she could make herself useful there. It was to dark to clean up inside. She had gotten half a dozen battery powered lamps and place inside the mill but instead of providing adequate light they just gave more prominence to the darkness. Not that there was much what she could do right now anyway. Pretty much everything that she could move by hand was gone. It was now shovels and wheel barrows time, but that required shovels and wheel barrows which she did not have yet. That was among the fist things she was going to get later. She would meet with Dan later at a building centre, but for that the centre had to open its doors and Dan his eyes.
She thought of going into the basement to see how Stu was doing but decided against it as she had not thought of wearing rubber boots that day. The pump they had installed was doing good work, however the water down there was still ankle deep and would probably stay at that level until Stu had discovered where the water was coming from. She doubted that there was much she could do down there besides getting wet feet. She looked down the stairs seeing the glow from Stu's helmet light, she wondered what it looked down there. The pump had been working since yesterday and it was only now that it was even possible to enter the basement. Her curiosity had to wait until she got herself the proper footwear.
She turned back towards the door and looked out. A figure that tightly wrapped in a heavy coat was walking towards her from the dark.
"You're up early." Jenny said to Barbara.
"It happens when people start ripping open the street in the middle of the night." Barbara said. Now that she had come closer Jenny could see her face. It was a face that did not want to be seen. "Are you busy?" she asked.
"Not really. I've given my magic signature. Until the rest of the world wakes up there isn't much I can do." Jenny said.
"How about some breakfast then?"
"I wouldn't say no to a cup of tea."
Perfect." Barbara said, "Follow me."
Barbara's house was not what Jenny had expected. But then it didn't really surprise her either. It was not an old ladies house, which made perfect sense to Jenny as the only thing old about Barbara was the amount of years she had lived. What was surprising was just how stylish the house was, in a messy way. The furniture was designer furniture following no particular style but chosen for their own merit and then carefully combined with each other so that their different styles complemented each other. There were paintings on the wall, modern, contemporary, impressionist, expressionist and some other styles that Jenny could not identify. What stopped the house from looking like exhibition for art and design were the clothes carelessly draped over the chairs and couches. The books and magazines scattered on every flat surface and the legions of glasses mugs and cups placed on top of them to prevent them all from flying away in case they suddenly came to life.
Strangely enough the kitchen was spotless. Still all very stylish but in a deeply utilitarian way. Every surface be it metal, stone or polished wood was clean. In hear everything had its precise place and function.
"Take a seat." Barbara said gesturing at one of three bar stools in front of an elevated counter facing the work space of the kitchen Jenny sat down and watched Barbara prepare tea using a tea maker that looked like it belonged inside of a 1960s interstellar space ship.
"What is it you do again?" Jenny asked.
"Hmm..." Barbara thought about the question for a while. "That's a hard question to answer." she said while she turned to the tea maker that had just announced that it was done with a load 'clack' noise. She poured the tea into two fashionable but miss matched mugs which looked like they could be the protagonists of a cup oriented buddy movie. "Maybe a gardener?" Barbara said, trying out the description in her mind. "Or a collector?" she considered the taste of that thought for a moment. "Milk? Sugar?" she asked.
"Huh?" it took Jenny a moment to process the question. "A bit of both. Thanks."
Barbara added a bit of milk to both mugs. "No not quite a collector." A tablespoon of sugar added to Jenny's cup the one she considered the old cup who bent the rules when it was necessary.
"You are not talking about plants." Jenny said. It was not a question, more a statement intended to give Barbara something to build her thoughts around.
"No I'm talking about... artists." she took the other cup, the young wild one that did things by the book until its hot temper got the better of itself. "She took a sip of tea, grimaced because it was too hot and put the cup down again. "But then artist isn't quite the right word either."
"So you are a kind of patron then?" Jenny asked.
"Do I look that rich?"
Jenny took a look around the bespoke kitchen. "Actually yes."
Barbara followed Jenny's gaze. "Ah. You've got a point there. But this is the fruit of my labour and not the other way round."
Jenny smiled judging the heat from her mug she tried a little sip of her tea. Good strong with a tinge of sweetness. "That still doesn't answer my question."
"I said it wasn't an easy question to answer." Barbara said still looking for the right words. " I help people, creative people with their work. Having an idea is just a seed for it to grow it needs to be tended and taken care off. That is a lot of hard work. Everyone has ideas, but bringing the more ambitious to fruition is hard."
"Yeah, I've noticed." Jenny laughed shaking her head, humour slwoly returning to her.
"Midwife!" Barbara said. "It fits but it make me sound so old."
Jenny knew when it was time to stay silent.
"Somewhere in between a gardener and a midwife." Barbara said slowly nodding. "I'm usually get there when the seed is has already opened, but I am there to tend the sapling. I help nurturing it, protect it." Barbara's soul was starting to glow. "Making sure that it survives the many storms that come to finally see it bloom. That's what I do." she looked at Jenny smiling a smile that had warmed generations before her. Right at this moment Barbara looked ancient yet ageless.
"Oh." Jenny could see how that was hard to explain. "You must have seen quite a lot of interesting things in your life."
"Like you could never imagine." Barbara said. "There were a lot of failures along the way too. But if I may have my moment of hubris, I helped bring several great works into this world which would have otherwise died in the minds of their creators."
"How did you know that that was what you wanted to do." Jenny asked. "And how did you turn that into a job?"
"The official version would be that I could see talent in other people since I was young. That I noticed that most creative people have a really hard time of making their ideas a reality. Either because they doubt themselves, they are doubted by others or because they simply don't know where to look for help."
"And the unofficial version?"
"The unofficial version or the truth as I like to call it is that when I was young I was a fan first and everything else second. I was here when the early rock bands appeared and I was loving it. The show the spectacle the people. At first I was just a groupie I guess you could say. Following bands around, talking to the musicians feeling the thrill of being part of it, getting to know other artists and their work. It was, it is intoxicating. When you meet people who see things that are just out of reach for the so called normal people who are happy getting their work done and use what ever they earn in money to recover what they have lost to their daily routine... you cannot help but to be in awe." Barbara was lost for a moment reliving these sublime moments.
"So you started out as a muse?" Jenny said feeling impressed.
Barbara snorted. "No. I was a vampire."
Jenny stopped mid sip. "A vampire?"
"I wasn't creating anything. I was just following these people around and eating up what they created. I was elevated by association. But I wasn't doing anything on my own. And this might be hard to imagine but back in the beginning it was actually easy to be close to the so called stars. It was a smaller world back then. But as they rose in fame and the fans went from a few dedicated people to an untold number of fanatics it became increasingly harder to get near them. I was 'lucky'" Barbara made air quotes with her fingers, "that I was among the first. I was friends with enough stars that I was still invited to the parties. However it became abundantly clear that the flame I was warming myself with was growing more and more distant with every day that passed. Until one day I found myself out side on the lawn of some fancy mansion, the sun was was rising again, it was one of those parties, that I realised that my life was coming to an end." Barbara exhaled.
"Where you thinking about suicide." Jenny asked. Somehow the thought of a woman like Barbara committing suicide was hard to imagine.
"No. In a way that would have been easier. Wrong and cowardly, but easier. I had lived my life exactly like I felt it had to be lived I had been right there in the moment and those moments had been spectacular. This was the point where I noticed that those moments where going to leave me behind and when that happened the thing that kept me going would be gone. And then what? I had no 'real'" the air quotes again, "qualifications to speak off and in contrast to the people I admired I had no artistic ability. At all."
"Everyone has artistic ability." Jenny said. Feeling like an idiot the moment the words had left her mouth.
"True. How are your drawing skills?" Barbara asked.
"er... do doodles count?" Jenny said.
"Ability is not the same as skill. And I had spent years of my life enjoying the skills of others, not cultivating my own what ever they may be. Also I never felt that drive. When you see artists, whether they are called that or not you can see it in the way they do things. They are not necessarily consumed by it but even among the unwilling, once they do their thing there is a clarity to it. There never was in clarity in what I did."
"But you said you followed those artist with deep determination."
Barbara wagged her finger at Jenny. "You are cheating. You already know how the story ends. For me this was my darkest moment. It was made worse by the fact that I was not at the end of the line. I knew that there was still a good deal of sunshine left but I knew that night was coming. I could feel it approach."
"So what was the the plot twist." Jenny asked. She took another sip of her tea which to her surprise was now merely warm.
"First came the time when I felt like the shortest candle. Feeling how I was dwindling but I could hardly stop to burn. In a way I pushed even harder. Trying experience as much as I still could. I talked to more people made more acquaintances while slowly sinking deeper into my dark thoughts. It was around this time that I noticed the other people at the fringes. I had been so distracted by the bright light of the famous that I did not notice the glowing embers of the many other artists who were working in obscurity. The plot twist was called Anne."
"Anne?"
"A young painter I knew without knowing at that time. You know the kind of person. You keep appearing at the same parties, start knowing each other, do some small talk, but you never don't get to see the real person behind the pleasantries."
Jenny had never had known someone like that. She obviously didn't go to enough parties. "Yeah. That kind of person.", she nodded,
"Well it was in the time I was sinking into an early but fulminant mid-life crises that I got to know her. Intimately."
"Right." Jenny said preferring to not let her curiosity stop the flow of the story.
"Anne was a painter. Out of art school for a while mainly maintaining herself by doing the odd job here and there, what she really wanted... what she needed was to be recognized though. When I went to the parties I was there to gorge myself on the radiance of others. She however went there to be seen. She might as well have been invisible. She lacked the ego of the self declared genius. She didn't think highly of her work. Actually the way she told it her work was rubbish, but it should be seen by others so that they may help her improving. To get to the point where she could actually express what she wanted to convey effectively." Barbara paused for a moment gazing at her tea. She took another swig. "These days you'd say that her self marketing was atrocious. But as I got to know her, I also got to know her art. And it was impressive. Far from perfect, still to restricted by what she had learned and by her lack of confidence. But you could see her energy and power past all of that. Her work was usually dark but always with something bright and colourful breaking out of that darkness. She did things like no one else, and she was good. To me it was obvious that the only way for her was up. That's not what happened. She kept working to make ends meet. Work on her art. Go out and be ignored by everyone. And bit by bit her flame was dying.
It was OK for me to fade away, you know? I was not happy about it, but in the end the world would not miss me. But her? Life had never felt so unfair to me like in the moment where I saw where Anne was heading. And that was something I was not going to let happen."
"What did you do?" asked Jenny her hand resting on her now cold tea cup.
"I still knew pretty much everyone. So I talked to the right people and made them look. I also gave Anne a crash course in advanced social skills so that she stopped killing her work in the eyes of others before they had a chance to judge for themselves."
"It worked." Jenny said. Not a question. Had it not worked she would not be sitting in this kitchen and not have this conversation.
Barbara nodded. "It worked. It was a lot of work, but in the end it was easier than I had thought it would be. I thought I would have to fight more, but Anne's art did all the fighting for me. It was mostly of talking to people. Bringing them together and make them appear at the right place at the right time. It meant an end to the odd jobs and she could finally focus on her art. She never became famous outside of certain circles, but I think that's just for the better. All things considered."
"What happened to her?"
Barbara's smile found something bitter and broke over it. "In the end her flame burnt to bright and she was consumed by it. She had some very good years but in then end... I don't really know what happened we had grown apart by that time. If I wanted to see her I could just see how she was in the various galleries you could find her work at. She was for a while resplendent but then her work took a turn back towards the dark. I thought she was maturing, getting back to her roots, following more 'adult' themes. I was wrong. I think. In the end she died of drug overdose..."
Silence.
Jenny thought about what she could say but everything she could say sounded stupid in her mind. This woman had opened up to her in a way that was a bit overwhelming considering that they just met a bit over a week ago.
"So..." Jenny cleared her throat, "what happened with you?"
"In general or after Anne had died?"
"Both..."
"In general:", Barbara took a deep breath, "I discovered my skill. I was no artist and would never become one. But I knew people and I know great works when I see them. I have a feel for potential. I had spent so much time around it that I had become an expert of sorts. So this became my calling. I left the burning light that had drawn me into the field and went looking for the embers making sure that they at least got a chance to blossom instead of fading away. Anne's fate... Anne's fate reminded me that I had a certain responsibility, that I was playing with fire after all. I took more care of the people I helped afterwards. That was stupid too, I became overprotective and ruined some perfectly good friendships. It took me a long while to get the balance right. To help people, to take care of them, while at the same time not becoming controlling." Barbara sighed. "And there are some people who just can't be saved. The best you can hope for is that as long as they stay they at least get the chance to be their best selves."
"I see." said Jenny slightly overwhelmed.
Barbara look at her, "Well, you asked." she said and laughed.
"So...er..." Jenny fidgeted on her bar stool.
"You've got a question." Barbara asked with an expectant smile.
"Yes. Well..."
"You want to know if I am helping you. In a professional capacity?" Barbara said.
Jenny flinched. "Yeah?"
"Right now I am helping you in a friendly capacity. Professional would mean I get a cut. That would not be right. At least not now. I'm fine, you have enough problems of your own, you don't need an 'investor'" there where the air quotes again, "to make things worse. But I see the spark in you. I am really curious about what you are going to do with the watermill and I introduced you to Adrian, who in turn introduced you to the man from the city." Barbara looked supremely satisfied as she said that. "Right now I'm perfectly happy sitting at the sidelines enjoying the spectacle. And providing tea and comfort if the need arises. Who knows what the future might bring." Barbara smiled a smile full of conspiracy and winked at Jenny.
Jenny opened her mouth and closed it again.
"You're welcome. Oh and see to it that the statics guy appears today. Adrian is an absolute professional but he tends to be a bit to convinced about his instincts when it comes to buildings which means that he sometimes starts to knock down walls and ask questions later. While I do trust him these days you need and architect for a loft extension, let alone a crumbling mill."
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