by Jessica Ayre
Jennie smiled at the flattery. Daniela herself was irresistible as she preened her newly-found face before the mirror, applying her own richly red lipstick and just a hint of pink to her tawny cheeks. She pulled off her shapeless black garment and donned her own dress, a loosely flowing pale green silk gathered by a wide belt at the waist.
Jennie looked admiringly at the returned Daniela Colombi. A little shorter than Jennie, more generous in her curves, she exuded an earthy warmth which made Jennie feel pale and insignificant. Yet she couldn't resent her: she was so very much there, so open with herself and to the world.
Releasing her thick black hair from its few grips, Jennie glanced cursorily at her own reflection. The long dark mass now framed her finely chiselled features and emphasised the ivory of her skin. It also made her look absurdly young, like a schoolgirl grown tall before her time.
She passed a brush quickly through her hair, wished Daniela a good weekend and turned to leave. As she opened the dressing room door, she all but bumped into a man's figure. Derek. He stood there, hand raised, about to knock. She brushed past him, managing a curt nod, and then walked away. Behind her she heard him proclaim sardonically in a loud voice, 'The standard of common courtesy in this business is sadly on the decline.'
Jennie hurried blindly out of the studio, pausing only when she was well out of doors. A light drizzle fell from the early evening sky. She reached into her large shoulder bag for her denim jacket, pulled it on and fastened it securely all the way up to her neck. Then she went in search of her bicycle at the far corner of the car park.
Why on earth did I behave like that? she chided her-self, her ears ringing with Derek's comment. Up until now she had managed to sidestep advances from the men at work in a friendly if shy manner. There was little point in making enemies, even if avoiding close contact was a priority. But with Derek Hunter her casual mask had slipped.
She waved to the guard at the television centre gate and wove her bicycle through the traffic. Pushing the recent scene from her mind, she concentrated on riding, not a simple matter on wet roads at this time of the evening, but quick and economical. And once she reached quieter streets, she loved the sheer sense of the wind in her hair, the joy of swift, self-powered movement.
She left the pleasant streets of Chelsea behind her and crossed over Battersea Bridge, enjoying the play of lights on the Thames. Her flat was just over the river. As always, she approached it with a slight anxiety. She brought her bicycle into the hall, looked around quickly, but no, there was no dark figure looming. She breathed her relief, locked the bicycle securely and went up the two flights of stairs to her flat.
Before unlocking her own door, she knocked at the one opposite and called, 'Everything all right, Mrs Owen?' She heard the sound of slow shuffling footsteps and waited. The door opened on the latch and a pair of bright blue eyes peered out of a lined face.
'Hello, dearie, have time for a cuppa?'
Jennie nodded and watched Mrs Owen's trembling fingers rise to the latch and open it clumsily. Mrs Owen smiled a warm greeting. 'Have a good day, dear?'
'Very good,' Jennie answered, and crossed the tiny room to take her place on one of the chairs at the wobbly kitchen table. Mrs Owen lived quite alone and Jennie knew that she depended on her visits as almost her only form of companionship.
When Jennie had first moved into the flat opposite last year, the old lady had shyly invited her in for tea. Aware of her loneliness, her diminishing strength, Jennie had taken to visiting her regularly, looking in to see if she were all right, or stopping to chat. Then in the course of the year she had begun to help the old lady with her shopping, bringing in groceries, making sure she had an adequate supply of tins. When she had painted her own flat, Jennie had discreetly suggested that Mrs Owen would like to make use of her remaining paint and she had proto cover Mrs Owen's gloomy walls in glistening white.
Jennie realised that her neighbour would have rejected anything that smacked of charity. But she genuinely liked the old woman, her fierce determination to carry on alone as long as she possibly could, her occasional flashes of wry humour. She also knew that in her own way she too depended on the old woman's presence. Mrs Owen was perhaps the only person in London who would notice if Jennie vanished: more importantly, Jennie thought, a mild self-pity stirring her, the only one who would care.
Mrs Owen pushed a wisp of white hair away from her forehead and chuckled as Jennie told her how she had turned the beautiful Daniela Colombi into a near replica of Mrs Owen. Then, having drunk down the last of her tea, she took her leave, promising to call in tomorrow with a supply of groceries.
She crossed the hall and opened the door to her own flat. Switching on the light and looking around her, she was once again struck by her good fortune. The room which faced her wasn't vast, but its large bay window looked north on to a row of trees between which she could see a green and catch glimpses of the river. The flat was a front one in an old mansion block which had seen better times, yet it was one of the few London flats where rent was controlled. Off the main room, there was a small bedroom and a tiny kitchen. Jennie had worked hard on the place, stripping down layers of mouldy wallpaper, constructing kitchen cabinets and shelves and painting the whole in a sparkling white which made the rooms grow in dimension. The carpentry skills she had developed gave her almost as much pleasure as the finished product.
She dropped her bag on the sofa she had made out of two foam mattresses and brightly-coloured fabric and went to stand in front of the easel in the window recess. She examined the figure on the canvas closely, her fingers itching to start work on it again. Tubes of oil paint covered the small table at her side. Under it Jennie had constructed cabinets in which her paintings could stand.
It was painting that was Jennie's real passion, but she had quickly realised during her first year at art school that there was no way she could support herself simply by doing that. The choice was to join the ranks of commercial artists or do something else. She had decided, for several reasons', on the latter, doing a course in stage and film make-up and leaving what painting talent she had free for serious work. Now every spare minute she had was devoted to painting. Since she couldn't frequently afford models, she roamed the city with her sketch pad looking for interesting faces, doing rapid drawings which she could take home and possibly rework on canvas. The painting which stood on the easel now was that of a young boy, hair spiky green in punk fashion and eyes which looked sadly out to a lost world. But the expression of the eyes was in sharp contradiction to the taut jerky lines of the body poised for assault. Jennie looked at the painting carefully, seeing where she would have to add colour, mute outlines, blur shape. She picked up a tube and then dropped it abruptly. Food first, she had promised herself. She often forgot to eat when she was home alone, and Daniela Colombi's comments on her thinness had made her determine that she would do so regularly and healthily.
Jennie took a chop out of the small refrigerator, placed it on the frying pan with some herbs and peeled two large potatoes which she set to boil. Waiting for her food to cook, she turned on the radio. A news report on Italy drew her attention. The crew would be travelling there soon and though Jennie was usually loath to leave her flat and her painting, she looked forward to this first trip abroad with excitement. Sicily: the name itself was magical, bringing with it the scent of orange blossom, visions of trees laden with olives, with lemons, and the grimmer aura of a criminal Mafia.
Now the urgent tones of a partisan song poured out of the radio.
Avanti popolo alla riscossa,
Bandiera rossa, bandiera rossa.
Avanti popolo alla riscossa,
Bandiera rossa trionfera!
Yes, Jennie remembered, this was one of Daniela's tunes, something about people moving forward to rebellion, the triumph of the red flag.
She picked up a wooden spoon, threw her shoulders back, and tapped her feet to the rhythm, her long hair swinging. How good it was to have a place of
one's own, to do whatever one pleased, far from others' eyes and tongues. How wonderful to relax, not to have to put on a face to meet the faces of others. Freedom. Jennie found herself in front of her green-haired boy. A wide smile breaking over her face, she put down her spoon and picked up a fine brush. The smell of burning meat seemed to disturb her not at all.
CHAPTER TWO
The morning sun shone brightly as Jennie left her flat the next morning. The sky was a limpid blue, the clarity of the air seemed to outline each apple green leaf, each cornice, each railing separately. Jennie took a deep breath. Spring had come at last. Spring, Jennie chuckled at the direction of her own thoughts, when a young woman's fancy turns to…
Taking a firm grip on the sketchpad beneath her arm, she decided to walk rather than cycle. It would take her a good hour to cover the distance, but what bliss to be able to see London free of its grey, winter drabness. Even the faces, Jennie remarked as she sauntered along, seemed to have changed overnight. Gloom had broken into smiles, people seemed to be looking outward rather than in.
She crossed the river, walked along the Chelsea Embankment, pausing only once to do a quick sketch of an old bearded derelict stretched out on a newspaper-covered bench. Then she wound her way through the imposing streets of Belgravia past the Wellington monument towards Green Park.
Paintings and crafts already covered the railings of the Park, framing the green of grass and trees outlandishly. People milled round, chatting, looking, buying. Children tugged on fathers' hands, asking to be carried on shoulder top or demanding merrily-coloured balloons. Piccadilly had forgotten its everyday existence, the rush and scurry of missed appointments, and taken on the air of a bazaar.
Smiling, Jennie walked through the Park gate and looked round for a few moments. She made her way towards a small circle of people who seemed intent on a single object. Yes, she had been right. There, in the centre of the group, sat Colin, perched on a stool, his head bent in concentration. He was applying blunt charcoal strokes to a sheet of paper. Miraculously the strokes joined together to form the face in front of him. Jennie watched the deftness Colin brought to his task. His jet black eyes hardly ever seemed to touch his subject. It was as if he had taken the face into himself at a glance and now seemed to be drawing from memory.
His drawing finished, Colin looked up and caught her eye. A slow smile spread beneath his bushy black moustache and he nodded, gesturing towards the railing where he had propped two folding chairs. Jennie fetched them and set them up at a small distance from him. She took her box of pastels and another of charcoals out of her copious bag, set up a few sketches around her, and while waiting for custom she began to sketch Colin.
The two had struck up an easy friendship some time back while Jennie was still a student. She had come to the Park with great regularity then, needing the extra money that the quick portraits brought in, as much as the practice. Gradually, she couldn't quite remember how, she and Colin had singled each other out and struck up a loose bantering twosome. They worked close to each other in the Park and Colin, who had a small van, had offered to transport Jennie's chairs for her. She had expressed her gratitude, and he had grinned, 'I'm the one who's grateful. It makes a change to have some worthy competition around here. My work improves.'
'What competition?' Jennie remembered chuckling wickedly. 'You get all the young lovers, almost all the attractive women, and all the men. Mothers and children come to me, and then only sometimes.'
Colin had replied sternly: 'Subjects are irrelevant in this part of the work.' But he had smilingly acknowledged that she was right.
And she had been more right than she knew, Jennie now realised as she sketched the long line of Colin's arched back. In all the Saturdays and Sundays she had spent in the Park, she could count on her two hands the instances when a man who wasn't well past his prime had sat before her. It was as if they were afraid that sitting passively to be drawn by a woman would rob them of some intrinsic strength.
She shrugged and noticed that a woman pulling a small girl by the arm had emerged from the group who had gathered round her. The woman made the girl sit in the chair opposite Jennie.
'I'd like you to do a portrait of her for her grandmother's birthday.'
Jennie nodded and smiled into the little heart-shaped face with its slightly frightened round eyes.
'It won't hurt,' she said, 'and I shall try to make you just as lovely as you are.'
The little girl rewarded her with a smile and tried to sit still. Only one swinging leg indicated her nervousness.
Jennie drew the small face quickly, shaded in the slight flush of the cheeks, the smooth wide brow. 'There,' she said. 'Come and tell me if you like it, and if you don't, I'll do another.'
The small warm body came close to hers and scrutinised the picture. Then the round eyes looked up at her.
'Could I do a picture of you now?'
Jennie laughed at the child's audacity and handed her the box of pastels and a sheet of paper. Very seriously she drew Jennie—a figure sitting stark upright in a chair, strands of hair all but covering big black eyes.
'There,' said the little girl. 'You can keep that and put it up here next to the others.'
Jennie did so and handed the little girl her portrait. 'A fair exchange,' she said, glancing up at the mother, who wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed or proud.
Jennie went back to her sketch of Colin. His face engrossed her. She felt she could never quite catch the austerity of its expression, somehow give life to the determinedly solitary aspect of his character. In it, she thought, there is a clue to myself. Colin, like her, was quite happy to be friendly, but only up to a point. There was a part of him which remained intensely private, almost secret, and although they had shared drinks and chat and she had even gone to his studio once, the veil of secrecy persisted.
She wondered whether he had a family ghost in the closet. The thought made her shudder as it brought the image of her own all-too-obtrusive ghost with his shaming presence.
Sensing a shape in the customer's chair, Jennie looked up, and surprise made her drop the pastel in her hand. There in front of her was Derek Hunter. His arms comfortably crossed, his feet firmly planted on the ground, a glint of irony in his smile, lie appraised her coolly, and Jennie felt her pulse quicken.
'Hello, Jennifer Lewis.' His voice was gruffly humorous. 'So this is what you do with your time!'
Jennie returned a slightly breathless hello and bent to pick up the dropped pastel. As she worked to compose her face, she realised that there was anger just beneath the surface of her surprise.
'What are you doing here?' she asked curtly.
'I've come to have a portrait done of myself for my grandmother's birthday.'
He's mocking me, Jennie thought, seething inwardly. She controlled her voice. 'There's a man over there,' she gestured towards Colin, 'who's a far more experienced portraitist than I am.'
'Oh, I've shopped around,' Derek said lightly, 'and I've decided on you.'
'The subject doesn't interest me, I'm afraid,' she managed icily.
He arched a single eyebrow and gave her a long slow look. 'I didn't realise one could dismiss subjects quite so perfunctorily in the Park.'
Jennie stifled a brusque reply, and swallowed hard. 'All right, I'll do you. For your grandmother.'
She rejected the pastels in favour of charcoal and jabbed at the paper with unwonted ferocity. The line she had drawn, she realised, had nothing to do with his face. It followed the angular jut of his shoulder through his shirt. She relaxed a little, allowing her hand to be her eye.
Small rough strokes traced the shape in front of her. She looked up and met Derek's gaze. He was staring at her acutely, as if he were the artist, not she.
Yes, Jennie thought suddenly, that was why men wouldn't on the whole pose for women. It reversed all suppositions, both about art and life. Drawing Derek, she was actively possessing him, shaping him, while he had to remain at least momentarily pa
ssive. She traced the angular line of his jaw, the oddly sensual lower lip, the wide somewhat feline eyes, and then, meeting them, realised he was resisting her, still watching her vigilantly. She smiled to herself, rising to the silent challenge, and made the eyes in her portrait wary, yet strangely ardent, as if they wanted to do the seeing without themselves being seen.
The result was discomfiting and not quite achieved. Jennie memorised the picture and moved to tear it up. It would need more work in the quiet of her studio. But before she could crumple up the drawing, Derek was at her side, stopping her hand.
'No, no, I'm paying for this pleasure.' He gripped her wrist with strong fingers and looked over her shoulder. Jennie flinched away from him, but her wrist remained locked in his grasp.
He looked at the drawing for what seemed a long time.
'Yes, you're right,' he said in a low voice turning his blue eyes fully on her, 'I do desire you.'
Jennie struggled to escape the insistence of his voice, his eyes, his hand on her wrist.
'Is this gentleman disturbing you, Jennie?' an icy voice at her side dispelled her rising tide of dizziness, and she turned to see Colin standing protectively by her, his dark eyes focussed threateningly on Derek. Still keeping hold of her wrist, Derek stood his ground. Only when Jennie had found her voice and uttered the 'no' dictated by common sense did he gently release her.
'Colin, meet Derek. We work together,' Jennie mumbled an explanation.
Colin looked at her questioningly, as if searching for the truth of her words. Then he glanced briefly at the rumpled drawing in her hands, at Derek, and again at the drawing.
'Interesting sketch, Jennie,' he said limpidly.
Derek chuckled, 'I've been trying to prevent her from destroying it. By rights, I assume it's mine,' he dug into the pocket of his trousers, 'at least once I've paid for the commission.'.
