The First Kiss

from The Tears of a Painter

I sulked a little about Mark taking off only a day after he’d arrived home for the Christmas holidays, but it didn’t last very long. I was too excited about setting up the easel. I took it up to the farm that year (despite everyone’s protests of there not being enough space in the Land Rover). In the end Tim tied it to the roof rack along with the timber for the canvas frames.

There was a giant cedar tree near the north fields where the Arabica bushes grew that I was dying to paint. Its great branches arched up and out into the air, each one with a life of its own it seemed. I’d seen it there year after year but had never worked up enough courage to ask my mother to let me go up to the fields and spend the day painting it. And anyway, I couldn’t have; I didn’t have an easel to stand my canvas on. But this year was different. I had an excuse. On our first night there, after our welcome dinner at the long table and after we’d gathered in the living-room around the fireplace for brandy and hot cocoa, just before I turned my light off for the night, I went back downstairs to find Mark’s grandma. I wanted to catch her on her own for a moment, to ask whether, in the morning, she would drive me to the Cedar. I waited until the last minute to bring up the question, afraid she might say no, I couldn’t spend the morning alone in the fields; the tree was at least a ten-minute drive uphill from the house and it wasn’t safe to be there on my own or something stupid like that.

You can just drop me off, I said, speaking quickly, in case she disagreed. I’ll be fine. The pickers will be working there the whole day anyway.

Until then I’d forgotten the coffee pickers. In my head, I had seen only the tree, but now more ideas came flooding in. I could add in the pickers as points of colour.

Do you know, Mark’s grandma broke into my thoughts, The cedar tree used to once upon a time be part of a whole cedar forest? Before we excavated the trees to make place for the coffee bushes. She shook her head and sighed. I still think it was a sin; one of many. The Juniperus Procera. You can still find their forests in the river valleys on the other side of the mountain. But who knows for how long more.

I didn’t know that.

It’s a brilliant idea, she declared. If you get up early enough, I’ll be leaving for the lodge at 6:30.

So I set the alarm on my wrist watch.

Mark’s grandma was the only one awake at that hour. We had marmalade over toast and a mug of fresh coffee together. It had rained through the night. The air was cool.

Take one of the walkie-talkies, and radio me when you’re done, she said. And take River with you, she’ll love being out there for the morning. In the end Sandy insisted on coming along too, so both the German Shepherds hopped into the back seat.

The early light stole my breath. This was a light we didn’t find in Mombasa. The Mombasa  mornings came with plum undertones. The ones here had a sparkling blue that travelled through sky, forest and the smell of fresh mud, to land on the dew sitting on each leaf crest. No wonder the coffee tasted amazing. The bushes ran on for as far as the eye could see. Camphor trees lined the side of the road, picking up the soil’s red ochre tone so that all that distinguished their trunks was the shadow and the early light dancing on their bark. This was a painter’s light. In my head, I took a photograph. This was the light I would paint.

In front of me, in the middle of the field of ripe coffee bushes, stood the greatest of them all, the Cedar tree. Beside me Sandy and River played and then later lay down, panting, and rested their heads on the earth. The coffee pickers arrived for work with baskets on their backs and coloured scarves twisted around their heads, and I was overjoyed for the colour they added. Yet despite the vast indescribable beauty and the freedom it gave my heart, I couldn’t escape the rigidity of painting the scene as it appeared. Something inside me was screaming: make it as your heart wants it; play with the strokes, the colour, the light.  But no—I stuck to what was there before me.

And neither did I paint the thick impasto I had first envisioned; in the end the canvas would look smooth. True to life. Although the Cedar Tree painting ended up looking spectacular, technically top notch, brushstrokes hardly distinguishable—I gave it as a Christmas present to Mark’s grandma, and it hangs in the lodge’s dining room even today—it looks like a photograph.

Quite a bit later, the sun was in the middle of the sky, and the smell of rain had disappeared—I’d put on my cap to keep my skin from burning—I heard the Land Rover approach. Sandy and River heard the engine too, and their ears pricked up. I looked at my watch; time had run ahead. Mark’s grandma was probably on her way back to the house and coming to fetch me. I wouldn’t be able to finish the layer I was working on—it was almost done, but I couldn’t keep her waiting. The Land Rover stopped down by the road.

I was about to wave and start putting away the brushes, when the door opened and out stepped Mark. What was he doing here? He’d told me he wouldn’t be coming up until the twenty-third.

You came early, I called down and waved out.

The dogs bounded towards him, leapt on him without restraint. Even at their age, they still did this with him. And he calmed them with ruffles all over their head and their necks. They loved him.