A Temporary Life, page 7
She takes out her handkerchief and wipes her eyes.
‘It would have broken her father’s heart, would this.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t break Yvonne’s,’ I say.
‘That’s right.’ She waits. ‘A good job he didn’t see it, I suppose,’ she adds.
She stands at the door.
‘If there’s anything else I can do, you’ll let me know.’
The street, cobbled, runs down to the warehouses that flank the river. Windowless façades, dark, sooted, loom above the roofs. A chimney, presumably of the mill where Mr Sherman worked, filters out a strand of smoke. Some of the houses have been boarded up: on one or two the roofs have gone.
‘They keep saying we’re going to be moved. Where to,’ she says, ‘I’ve no idea. They’ve stopped building houses here, you know, unless you’ve money of your own, that is.’
Her eyes, once again, are full of tears. The handkerchief, for a moment, conceals her face.
‘I can’t make any sense of it. We had such hopes. It ends like this.’
She leans across; I kiss her cheek; her hand, briefly, clutches at my arm.
‘If there’s anything you can do, you’ll let me know.’
‘If there’s anything at all,’ I say.
‘If you’ve any spare time, you know, I’m always here. I can always cook you a meal,’ she says.
I glance back, briefly, from the corner of the street.
She’s standing at the door; she waves.
When I raise my arm she waves again, and waits, still waving, until I disappear.
2
A piece of clay, as I open the door, thuds into the wall above my head. A moment later the light goes out. There are several screams, a shout: a stool falls over, then a metal stand.
When the light goes on there’s silence in the room.
‘What’s going on in here?’
‘One of the stands fell over,’ someone says.
‘We thought the lights had fused.’
‘Some of the clay got spilled.’
‘That’s right.’
The model, red-cheeked, red finger-marked, I now see, around her chest and thighs, has smiled; she looks down at the chalk-marks on the floor: the upturned stand is set back on its legs: the tiny clay effigy on top has taken on a lop-sided stance, like a figure pressed up against a pane of glass.
Similar clay effigies, built around wire armatures, are mounted on the stands around the room. Blobs of clay, like excrement, are spattered on the wall. Smeared with grey clay, the students return to their respective stands.
‘Could you look at my figure, sir?’
An arm, thicker than a leg, has fallen off. A head, as large as the abdomen itself, is on the point of following it: gargantuan features leer out from the massive, square-shaped skull.
‘It seems you’ve become absorbed in too many details; and lost your initial conception of the figure as a whole.’
‘Hole?’
‘If you forget about the eyes and nose, the fingers, elbows, knees and toes, and think instead of the figure as a whole: a tall cylindrical shape, dividing into two cylindrical shapes below and surmounted by a sort of ball …’
‘Yeh.’
‘When you’ve got the overall shape you can start putting in the individual features. The arm, for instance, if you look at it, is scarcely thicker than the leg.’
Dull, red-veined eyes look over at the model; they survey it reproachfully from head to toe.
‘In any case, each arm should have an armature,’ I add. ‘You better put one in.’
‘Yeh.’
‘I should get the clay out of your hair as well.’
‘Oh.’
‘And when you do the head keep the clay against the armature: otherwise you’ll find that’ll start falling off as well.’
‘Yeh.’
‘Anything else?’
‘What?’
‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Oh.’
I move on, speculatively, to the adjoining stand. The student there is attired in an American Army combat jacket; he wears a pair of jeans patched at the knees, and a pair of American Army combat boots. His clay’s been moulded into a single elongated cube, the corners meticulously squared, the top rounded slightly; across its upper surface have been plaited what look like individual strands of hair.
‘Do you intend to cut into the clay?’ I ask.
‘What for?’
‘That’s the shape you intend to finish with?’
‘I don’t intend to finish with anything. I work from an empirical point of view.’
‘I see.’
‘You start with an original reaction, and go on,’ he says, ‘from that.’
He sticks his tongue out, briefly, between his teeth; the modelling tool travels smoothly down the edges of the cube.
‘Modelling from real life, in any case, is a bit irrelevant.’
‘Irrelevant?’
‘Who paints from life, for instance, any more?’
‘I do.’
‘You do.’
He glances over, briefly, in my direction.
The student behind me has begun to whistle, quietly; a moment later he begins to sing.
‘Love me,
there is no other;
love me,
for I love you.’
‘I don’t make up the curriculum,’ I tell him.
‘That’s the trouble. The ones who ought to are never consulted.’
‘And the ones who do, I suppose, have no idea.’
‘Look at this, for instance.’
He cuts off a sliver of clay; he crouches, looks along the surface of the cube; then, with one eye closed, he removes another.
‘Love me,
I am your mother;
love me,
your father, too.’
‘Perhaps you could ask Wilcox.’
‘To stop all this?’
‘If he’d mind you being consulted.’
‘He’d have a fit.’
‘You could burn the studio down if he didn’t agree.’
He looks across.
‘Love me,
I am your brother;
love me,
your sister, too.’
‘If he refused then, you could ask him to resign.’
‘Why don’t you do something, then?’
‘I’m not being taught.’
‘You’re doing the teaching, though.’
‘I haven’t taught you anything. Only advised you,’ I tell him, ‘to burn the art school down.’
‘And that’s what you’re here to teach?’ he says.
‘I wouldn’t advise it of everyone,’ I tell him. ‘Only of those,’ I add, ‘who might put it to some use.’
‘Do I look like an incendiarist?’ he says.
‘Love me,
I am your teacher;
love me,
your follower, too.
Love me,
I am life’s preacher;
love me,
Love’s seeker, too.’
‘I’d say, perhaps, the figure was over-generalized,’ I tell him. ‘It might be more interesting, as a next step, to break it down into its individual parts. All works of art, I’d say, on the whole, adhere to the principle of – for want of a better term – reciprocating parts.’
‘I see.’
He glances at the clay again.
‘The paraffin’s kept in the caretaker’s store. Next to the pottery room. I’ve seen it there myself.’
‘I’ll look into it,’ he says.
He doesn’t look up.
‘Radical feeling in this country is compromised,’ I tell him, ‘from the very start. They want a piece of the cake, yet, to get it, they won’t even forgo the jam.’
‘Love me,
there is no other;
love me,
for I love you.’
‘I forgo the jam, and never have the cake. You youngsters nowadays,’ I tell him, ‘may stand a better chance.’
‘The you
I see is me;
the me
I see is you.’
‘What privations did you have to undergo?’ He looks across.
‘My radicalism is treated as insanity; with you it’s the idealism of the young. People, in the end, are afraid of paranoia. Idealists, if they’re young enough, can get away with almost anything.’
He cuts slowly into the walls of the cube.
‘And would you say the same to Wilcox, then?’
‘He’ll burn the building down himself.’
‘Himself?’
‘Or get someone like you to do it for him.’
I move over to the adjoining stand. A gargantuan girl with dark hair, cut short, and a spotty face is constructing a figure as immodest in its proportions as she is herself; arms like inflated rubber tyres are suspended beneath a gigantic, mongol-featured head: a pendulous abdomen, hacked at frustratedly on either side, overhangs a pair of stubby, bulbous legs.
I look over at the model; the finger-marks around her breasts have faded; the whiteness of her figure stands out against the faded whiteness of the wall behind.
‘Perhaps we’ve been over-generous.’
She regards her figure with a frown.
‘Not only with the clay, but with the proportions of the thing itself.’
‘Yes.’
‘The head, normally, goes about eight times into the overall height of the body.’
‘Mine doesn’t.’
‘No.’
‘It goes about twice.’
She contemplates the model as if, in this respect, it’s let her down; as if its proportions change, habitually, the moment I arrive.
‘I’m not very keen on these evening classes, in any case,’ she says.
‘Why’s that?’
‘The light’s all different.’
‘It can’t distort proportions; only their effect.’
‘It’s the effect I’m aiming for,’ she says.
‘More subjective.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. She shakes her head.
‘Is the body normally half as broad as it’s tall?’ I ask.
‘Some bodies are,’ she says.
‘But not the ones you model from,’ I tell her.
‘That’s not the one I’m doing, necessarily,’ she says.
‘Isn’t that the object of the class? After all, a figure like that you could do at home.’
‘I haven’t got any clay at home,’ she says.
I say, ‘Take some with you. I’ll lend you some.’
‘I’m supposed to do it here,’ she says.
‘There’s no compulsion to do one here,’ I tell her.
‘What would you suggest?’ she says.
I take her modelling tool; I whittle off the clay: I’m aware, in fact, for a while, of nothing else. The broad, grey wedges disappear; a slender, sylph-like shape emerges, as if by magic, from the centre of the clay. The other students, after a while, have gathered round.
‘It’s a sort of formula, I suppose,’ the jacketed youth has said, ‘Like throwing pots: a kind of craft.’
‘That’s what you’re here to study, I suppose,’ I tell him.
‘Form creates emotion, and emotion its own form,’ he says.
I’m aware, suddenly, of the Newman girl; she’s standing at the rear of the group, her eyes narrowed, regarding the figure on the stand as she might some object she particularly covets in the window of a shop.
‘Anything else,’ the student says, ‘is a kind of illustration. A set of rules, a gimmick; something applied externally to a given situation.’
‘Like paraffin,’ I add.
‘You’re figure’s like paraffin,’ he says.
‘Is it time for a rest?’ the model asks.
Her green, hazel-coloured eyes meet mine.
‘It’s five minutes past,’ the whistling student says.
The model steps down.
‘Anyone want a humbug, then?’ she says. She retrieves a dressing-gown from a nearby stool and takes out a bag of sweets from one of its pockets.
‘They’re all Philistines here,’ the Newman girl has said. She runs her hand across her hair.
‘I didn’t think you were in this class,’ I tell her.
‘History of Architecture.’ She gestures back, vaguely, in the direction of the college. ‘It’s break. I thought I’d wander down.’
A wireless has gone on across the room; someone, beside the model’s cubicle, has begun to smoke. The model herself, her dressing-gown undone, is dancing, lamely, with the whistling youth.
‘I thought you despised all this,’ she says.
‘That’s right.’
‘Why do it, then?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
She runs her hand, once more, across her hair. She’s dressed in a short grey skirt, pleated, and a yellow blouse; her hair is fastened back beneath a yellow ribbon.
‘I find them, on the whole, more stimulating than the rest.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,’ she says.
She leans against the wall, then shakes her head.
‘You don’t give a damn about anything,’ she says.
‘I don’t suppose that’s true,’ I tell her.
She laughs. She glances idly along the row of figures.
‘Isn’t modelling from life, in any case, an irrelevance. Like painting from life, I suppose,’ she says.
The jacketed youth has come across.
‘Love they say
is blind,
but love to strangers
more than kind.’
‘Has he got you on this incendiarist kick?’ the youth has said.
‘Incendiarist?’ The girl has flushed.
‘He’s encouraging me to burn the building down.’
‘I offered it, empirically, as a point of view. In a specific instance, you understand,’ I tell him.
‘I find this class an irrelevance, in any case,’ the student says. ‘If I didn’t come,’ he adds, ‘they’d stop my grant. Between irrelevance and ineffectiveness I have no choice.’
‘The only thing to do,’ I tell him, ‘instead of complaining, is to exploit the exploiters as often as you can. In the end, you’ll find, they’ll come to you.’
‘For what?’
‘They’re suckers for punishment of any kind,’ I say. He glances at the girl.
‘Is anyone taking you home?’ he says.
‘I suppose they are.’ She nods her head.
‘I thought I’d ask.’ He turns away.
A voice, somewhere by the door, has said, ‘Is this a mothers’ meeting, then? Or, if they’re barmy enough, can anybody join?’
The dance tune stops; it starts again, stops, comes back, then fades away. The model, like a balloon, collapses on a chair. The whistling youth sits down as well.
Wilcox, red-faced, is standing in the door; his fists are clenched. He gazes round.
‘Started a dance-club, have we? I thought this was where the Donatellos and the Verrocchios of the future were supposed to start. Where they learnt first principles, that is, if nothing else.’
His eyes, as he advances, travel along the row of stands. His gaze, finally, is arrested by the fat girl’s figure.
‘Who’s done this?’
‘That’s mine,’ the fat girl says.
‘Did you do that?’ He seems amazed.
‘Sir did it for me, sir,’ she says.
For the first time he’s aware of my figure by the wall.
‘And how much of it’s yours?’ he says.
‘I did some of the bottom bit,’ she says.
‘Bottom, anatomically speaking, or bottom, figuratively speaking?’ Wilcox says.
‘I started some of it off,’ she says.
She’s about to break into tears, it seems.
Wilcox, nonplussed, has come across.
‘I make no rules about teaching, as you know,’ he says. ‘But if a student’s work it is, Freestone, a student’s work it ought to remain. What would an inspector think,’ he adds, ‘if he suddenly came on this?’
He lifts his head.
‘Is someone smoking in here?’
He looks around.
‘It’s not you again, then, Freestone?’
‘I think it was here when we first came in.’
He narrows his eyes. Pale clouds of smoke, thin, scarcely visible, drift slowly past the electric light.
‘There must be an invisible man in here. Nearly every room I go into I find there’s been somebody smoking before anybody else arrives. I think he must come in, you know, when everybody else is out.’
He sees, suddenly, with widening eyes, the elongated cube.
‘What’s this?’
The skin on the top of his head has reddened.
‘That’s mine,’ the jacketed youth has said.
‘What’s it for?’
The youth has stepped across.
‘It’s not for anything,’ he says.
‘Not for somebody’s tombstone, then?’
‘It’s a simple unequivocal form,’ the student says.
‘It might be unequivocal, and it might be a form. You could say the same about my bloody boot.’ The Principal laughs. ‘And my boot,’ he adds, ‘I don’t need to tell you, isn’t a work of art.’
‘Of that you can’t be sure,’ the student says.
‘If I put it up your backside you’d be bloody sure,’ the Principal says. ‘Good God: you don’t have to come here to do stuff like that; you can do all that, tha knows, at home. Without the presence,’ he adds, ‘of a living model.’
He looks at me.
‘It’s supposed to be a rest, then, is it?’
The model, as if inflated, suddenly gets up.
‘The rests round here get longer every day. Longer even than the bloody classes. We’ll be paying them soon for supping tea.’
The model steps over to the chalk-marks on the floor.
‘Could I have a word with you,’ he says, ‘outside?’
He waits for the model to resume her pose.
‘I don’t see much challenge, you know, in that. One leg forward, one leg back: she ought to have her arms stretched out, or one like this, above her head.’
He stands, one arm raised, inside the door.
The arm still raised, he steps outside.
The air in the yard is cool. A light at the top of a flight of steps marks the rear entrance to the college. Piles of coke occupy one corner of the yard; beside them stands a large parked car, Wilcox’s, a fawn-coloured Armstrong Siddeley. Hendrick’s dark blue sports car is parked further away, towards the gate.
