A Temporary Life Read online

Cramp, I think. Or pins and needles.

  ‘Sort of projecting, I suppose, the principal masses.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  I ease my legs against the stool.

  I glance over, idly, to the drawing on my right.

  From a distance of three or four feet the figure there looks uncommonly like a peeled banana. To my left, the Black Hole of Calcutta: a mass of erasures, scratches, crossings-out; beyond that, an armature-like construction – arms and legs reduced to matches – and on the other side a figure constructed from what look like motor car inner tubes and tyres.

  ‘Perhaps you can shade a few of these in.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Give the figure,’ I say, ‘some sort of context.’

  ‘Context?’

  ‘Give it some relief.’

  ‘The idea, really, is to get the masses.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I see.’

  The hand comes down again. I’m attracted immediately by the neatness of the nails, like petals, pink and smooth. A girl.

  ‘To keep it two-dimensional,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  Her hair is dark. It hangs around her face in a shallow cowl. Her eyes are grey. A thin line of black mascara strengthens the already pronounced effect of her thick black lashes. The lips, too, in profile, remind me of a flower: the texture of her skin, smooth, unblemished, brings back the image of a petal. I smell her scent.

  ‘I wondered if you’d look at one or two drawings I have,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I lift the pad.

  ‘Not here,’ she says.

  ‘Perhaps I could see them when we have a rest,’ I tell her.

  ‘I haven’t got them here,’ she says.

  ‘Bring them tomorrow, then,’ I tell her.

  I get up from the stool.

  ‘Shall I carry on?’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell her and cross over to the door, hear Wilcox’s voice in the corridor outside, and move back slowly towards the window.

  I glance over at the girl. Fletcher? Newman. Christian name? Begins with ‘R’.

  She wears a white sweater and a short grey skirt; her leg’s outlined against the profile of the stool.

  I look back towards the window. ‘Wil cox be in fashion this year?’ someone has written on the paintwork.

  ‘Tennis tonight, or something else?’

  Hendricks has come into the room on soft-soled shoes – lunch-time spent playing Badminton in the gymnasium of the Technical College across the way – and now stands by my elbow gazing at the view.

  ‘Spend more time looking out of there than looking at anything else, I think.’

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him.

  ‘How about the tennis?’

  ‘Will the weather hold?’ I ask.

  ‘Should think so. Still autumn, not winter. Five-thirty, old man? I’ve booked a court.’

  He glances at the model.

  ‘What’s she like?’ he says.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Might come in and do a plate or so myself,’ he tells me.

  Hendricks teaches lithography and etching.

  ‘Heard who’s disappeared this morning, then?’ he says.

  ‘No,’ I tell him. I shake my head.

  ‘Freddy. Gone and vanished. Been searching high and low,’ he says.

  He takes out a comb and runs it through his hair, ducking down so that he can see his face reflected in a framed print of the ‘Discobolus’ on the wall.

  ‘Hell of a temper. Been into every room,’ he says.

  ‘Came in here. Never mentioned it,’ I tell him.

  ‘Preliminary inquiries. Search everybody, I suppose. Won’t commit himself too soon. Bide his time, old man. Then pounce.’

  Freddy is a yellowing, much-fingered plaster cherub used, perhaps in Wilcox’s earliest days, for drawing from the antique. Recently, several other casts have disappeared, integral parts of their anatomy having, over the months, preceded them. Freddy’s own single dismembered piece lies invariably on the pedestal by his side.

  ‘How’s it feel?’

  ‘Feel?’

  ‘Arms ache?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘A few more games: you’ll feel all right.’

  He glances over at the model: he gives his comb a final shake.

  ‘Do you want a lift, or shall I meet you there,’ he says.

  ‘See you there, I think,’ I tell him.

  ‘Okey-doke,’ he says.

  He gazes round at the students, crosses to the door, waves, then disappears.

  ‘Rest,’ I say and watch, abstracted, as the model eases first one foot then the other, then, breasts trembling, climbs down from the throne.

  She pushes her feet inside her slippers, eases her back then, glancing first in my direction then at the door, walks over to the drawings.

  She examines the Michelin tyre-man first, frowning, her head held slightly to one side.

  Still frowning, she moves over to the armature, then to the Black Hole of Calcutta, gazes for several seconds at what is, plainly, an indecipherable mass of scrawls and whirls, then moves on, more slowly, to the triangulated frost-man. From there her eyes pass on, perplexed, to the peeled banana. As if some error of judgement on her part is involved, she glances back along the row; peeled banana, frost-man, black-hole/coalhole, wire-man, tyre-man; she glances up, smiles, stretches, then comes over to the window.

  ‘I used to be interested in drawing.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘Not now?’

  ‘Never find the time.’

  I examine the skin around her shoulder. The white line left by a strap runs down through an area of suntan to the white skin above her breasts.

  ‘I don’t suppose if I had the time I’d be much good in any case. Not nowadays,’ she says.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Not with this modern stuff,’ she tells me.

  She points back towards the drawings.

  ‘I don’t understand half of it,’ she says.

  ‘Same here.’

  She smiles again.

  ‘You’re supposed to be a specialist,’ she says.

  I can see our two figures reflected in the framed print of the ‘Discobolus’, a broad, stocky, dark-haired man: secondhand, fawn jacket, white shirt and blackened collar; and the pale, pink, glowing figure of a light-haired woman. She runs her hand across her chest.

  ‘Think I’m boiling. These heaters are stronger than you think.’

  I feel her arm.

  ‘I’ll switch them off,’ I tell her.

  ‘Too cold. Even with one on it gets too cold. And with two on, of course, it gets too hot.’

  ‘Better too hot,’ I say, ‘than cold.’

  ‘That’s what I think, love!’ she tells me.

  She glances back towards the throne. Beads of sweat have run down beneath her arm. Her feet are still inflamed; her ankles, perhaps, are always swollen.

  ‘At this other place I go to the heaters are always breaking down,’ she says. ‘It’s like standing in an ice-box.’

  ‘At least one or two things work here,’ I say.

  ‘Thanks, I think, to Mr Wilcox.’

  ‘Thanks to Mr Wilcox. Yes,’ I add.

  She begins to laugh.

  Behind her I can see the Newman girl. She’s standing with her back to the wall, her hands clasped behind her, pushing herself off from the wall then letting herself fall back against it, laughing, listening to the small, squat, black-haired boy who has produced the peeled banana.

  ‘In some schools they hardly draw from the model anymore.’

  ‘Be doing you out of a job,’ I tell her.

  ‘If it wasn’t this I’d probably find something else,’ she says.

  ‘Such as?’ I say.

  ‘Worked in a factory once,’ she says and adds, ‘Sewing buttons.’

  She lifts my tie.

  ‘Don’t you have anyone to
sew them on?’ she asks me.

  ‘No,’ I say. I shake my head.

  ‘That’s how it is nowadays,’ she says. ‘Don’t think marriage, looking after somebody comes into it anymore. Not like it used to.’ She runs her hand across her chest. ‘Think I’ll go get dressed,’ she adds.

  The Newman girl has left the wall; she’s walking along the row of stools, glancing at the drawings, her hands behind her back, stooping, pausing here and there, her feet astride, her chin thrust out: she glances up at one point and sees me by the window. She shakes her head, smiles, then, flushing slightly, moves on around the stools.

  3

  I go through to the staff room before the class is finished. Pollard is sitting at the table drinking coffee and reading a midday paper. Small, red-faced, fair-haired, attired in a patched jacket and light-coloured corduroys, he leaps to his feet and makes some attempt to hide the cup.

  ‘O my God,’ he says. ‘I thought it was the Skipper.’

  He takes out a lighted cigarette from the pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Only me,’ I tell him. I go over to the cupboard where the register is kept.

  ‘Back Methuselah,’ he says, ‘or Genghis Khan?’

  ‘Neither,’ I tell him. I shake my head.

  ‘Methuselah’s a damn good bet,’ he says. ‘Nine to four against. Can’t lose.’

  ‘What lost yesterday?’ I ask him.

  ‘Dope-test, old man. They had it from the jockey.’

  He folds up the paper, finishes the coffee, and goes over to the door.

  ‘Heard about the tool-less cherub?’

  ‘Gone absent, Hendricks says.’

  ‘Third one in as many weeks,’ he says. He adds, ‘When de Milo goes, and that prickless wonder with his discus, we’re going to be bereft of all antiques.’

  ‘Who’s taking them?’ I ask him.

  ‘Madman. Bound to be,’ he says. He shakes his head. ‘Can’t get rid of them. Not even to the rag-man.’

  Pollard teaches design and lettering. At one time, according to Hendricks, he’s been a lightweight amateur boxer: his legs are slightly bowed and his arms, when he walks, swing out on either side like the handles of a jug. The students call him Major. He has, though I’ve never seen them, seven children. In the evenings he can be seen occasionally in the town driving about in an open-top prewar Austin Seven with several of his offspring in the back.

  ‘Who’s the girl with dark hair and light grey eyes?’ I ask him.

  ‘Who is she indeed, then?’ Pollard says.

  ‘In my class, by the name of Newman, I believe,’ I tell him.

  ‘Rebecca is her name,’ he says.

  ‘Have you seen her work?’ I ask.

  ‘All I wish to see of it,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t think much to it, then?’ I say.

  ‘Not paid to think, old man,’ he tells me.

  I take down the register, remove the notice which says, ‘I’d like this register down a little bit sooner if somebody can be bothered to sign it. Signed: R. N. Wilcox’, and open it at the page devoted to first year entries.

  ‘What’s “N” in Wilcox stand for, then?’

  ‘Norman,’ Pollard says.

  ‘Robert or Norman: which does he prefer?’ I ask him.

  ‘Neither,’ Pollard says.

  Pollard, I’ve noticed, always addresses the Principal as ‘sir’, Hendricks as ‘Principal’. I haven’t, as yet, decided which I ought to use myself. Occasionally I’ve addressed him as ‘Mr Wilcox’, but on the whole I avoid talking to him directly unless Wilcox comes up and actually starts a conversation. On these occasions there’s never been any need to call him anything at all.

  ‘Rebecca Kathleen Elizabeth Newman. Born … Address … Previous education:’ here follows a list of schools so long that I give up reading. She’s travelled, evidently, half way round the world.

  ‘That’s where he gets his nickname from.’

  Pollard is still standing by the door: it looks out directly onto the design room. Beyond one of the screens I can see the skeleton, used in anatomy, being waved as a signal, slowly, to and fro.

  ‘R. N. Hence: “Skipper”,’ Pollard says. He adds, ‘Anything of interest, then?’

  Wilcox’s voice comes boldly from the corridor, outside.

  ‘Who’s in charge,’ it says, ‘in here?’

  Pollard douses his cigarette, drops the butt into his jacket pocket, pointing at the kettle. ‘Be a chap,’ he says.

  ‘Damn racket. Can hear it in me room. Who’s teaching, or has he gone on holiday, then?’

  The door has closed.

  A moment later I can hear Pollard’s voice as if at the end of some hour long peroration droning on behind the screens.

  I pour the remaining water from the kettle, pour in cold water, rinse it out, then do the same With Pollard’s cup.

  The door has opened.

  Wilcox puts his head inside.

  ‘What’s going on in here, then? Mothers’ meeting?’

  ‘Checking on the register,’ I tell him.

  ‘That’s a bloody miracle,’ Wilcox says.

  He crosses to the sink.

  ‘Been brewing up, then, have they, lad?’

  ‘Don’t think so. No.’ I shake my head.

  Wilcox crosses to the kettle, feels it: he glances about him at the room.

  Two windows look down onto the yard at the back of the college: onto piles of coke and the broken roof of a bicycle shed.

  ‘Cool it down and think I never notice. But somebody’s been drinking coffee. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘It could easily be the paint,’ I tell him.

  The smell of paint from a recent bout of midsummer decorating still lingers in the building, fighting a rearguard action with Wilcox’s Personal Deodorant – a smell of senna pods and weakened tea – and the more indigenous smells from Hendrick’s acid baths and lithographic plates.

  ‘Know coffee when I smell it. Ought to. Had a lifelong aversion to the bloody stuff. Shortens your life, keeps you awake, encourages indigestion.’

  He opens the cupboard, feels the other cups, then comes over to the table.

  ‘I’ll catch them one day. Mark my bloody words. It’s not the drinking I object to, as the example that they set.’

  I fold the register, return it to the cupboard, then move over to the door.

  ‘Who’s been missing, then?’ he says.

  ‘I was looking up a name,’ I tell him.

  ‘A name?’

  He waits.

  ‘Don’t need names in this place. You, you and you. That’s always been my motto.’

  I wonder, not for the first time, if Wilcox mightn’t be deranged; if he’s not in need of some sort of medical attention.

  ‘I’ll get back to the class,’ I tell him.

  He nods. ‘Cold do you think?’ he says. ‘Or warmer?’

  ‘Warm enough.’ I look about me at the room.

  ‘Not in here. The life room,’ Wilcox says.

  ‘To warm, if anything,’ I tell him.

  ‘Always complain,’ he says. ‘The models.’ He adds, ‘Always complain if they get a chance.’ He looks over to the window. ‘Belly-ache to me, but who do I have to belly-ache to?’

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him.

  Behind me, faintly, I can still hear Pollard’s voice.

  ‘Not a day goes by but somebody doesn’t start.’

  ‘It’s a difficult situation.’

  ‘Situation?’ He glances over at the kettle, at Pollard’s cup, at the copies of Art Review and Studio International, months if not years now out of date. He looks across. ‘You’ve heard about the plaster-cast, I take it?’ He waits, momentarily, for this to be confirmed. ‘I’ll come up here one of these days and find the entire place has disappeared.’

  He pulls out a chair, sits down, and lowers his head between his hands.

  He gazes down for a while into the bottom of Pollard’s cup.

  ‘Land of the Philistines, roun
d here.’ He coughs. ‘Nothing but technicians. Don’t think we’ve got an artist in the place.’

  He coughs again. The skin on the top of his head has reddened.

  ‘Same down there.’ He nods at the floor. ‘Sculpture? More like a rag and bone shop. When you think of Phidias and Donatello it makes you wonder what you’ve got.’

  Through the wall, from the direction of the life room, comes the sound of several cries and shouts.

  ‘I better be getting back,’ I tell him.

  ‘Back?’

  Wilcox rubs his head.

  On top he’s completely bald. A thin reef of greying hair circles the craggy contour of his skull.

  ‘In the old days you had a set of rules. Standards. Things you could rely on. Laws. These days you’ve got hardly anything at all.’

  The cries from the life room have grown a little louder. Wilcox raises his head.

  ‘It’s not often I open up,’ he says. He watches me, sharply, out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘One evening, if you’re free,’ he adds, ‘come up to dinner.’ He gets up from the table.

  ‘Dinner?’

  ‘Not often I have anybody back.’

  He glances round him once again.

  ‘Better get back to that racket. I can hear them through the bloody wall.’

  I close the door, cross the design room, see Pollard’s head raised, inquiringly, beyond the screens, then pass on to the corridor outside.

  When I open the door of the life room two of the students are dancing on the throne.

  The shouting fades. The two get down.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll have that again,’ I tell them.

  The model shakes her head.

  ‘I don’t mind it, love,’ she says.

  The Newman girl is still sitting on her stool, drawing. She’s scarcely raised her head.

  I cross over to the window. The room itself grows quiet.

  I gaze out, abstracted, to the distant line of trees and hills. Odd clouds of smoke and steam have risen from the valley bottom, dull and heavy, bulbous, flung up against the lightness overhead.

  4

  ‘I wondered,’ she says, ‘if you’d like to come and see them. It might be easier than bringing them all up here.’

  ‘Come and see them where?’ I ask her.

  ‘At home.’

  She points off, vaguely, in the direction of the town.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got the time,’ I tell her.