The China Bird

by Bryony Doran

  ‘Are you ashamed of me or something?’

  She puts her board down on her lap. ‘What’s up with you today? You’re like a bear with a sore head.’

  ‘So? Are you ashamed?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she looks down at the drawing. ‘If you must know, it’s the opposite. I think I’ve got something really special here.’ She looks up again. ‘Thanks to you. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want him looking at drawings of me.’

  She has had enough of this, she doesn’t care anymore whether he storms out or not. ‘Edward, make up your mind will you? One minute you’re asking if I’m ashamed of you, and the next minute you don’t want me to show Alex the drawings. You can’t say that. Not after all the work I’ve done. Surely you didn’t think I was just going to lock you away in a cupboard for Christ’s sake!’

  He puts his hands to his collar and refastens his shirt button.

  ‘Oh God! I’m sorry. I don’t know which way to turn. If you knew how important this whole thing is to me.’

  ‘That’s why you treat your model with so much disrespect is it? Do you think I come here every week just so you can be rude to me?’

  She feels a lump rising in her throat, she has always hated conflict. A single tear courses down her cheek, plops onto her paper. She remains silent, unable to speak. She hears him say, softly, ‘It really means that much to you?’

  His face is filled with consternation.

  She looks up and nods, ‘Don’t you realise that art is my whole life? I’m not like the other students. I don’t go out drinking every night. This work I’m doing with you, I feel it’s my best work yet.’

  ‘Really?’ He suddenly seems impressed. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was thinking about that the other night. There’s a certain …’ she pauses, searching for an appropriate word, ‘… frisson, I think the word is, about you.’

  He seems pleased with the description, even while he tries to hide it.

  ‘I’m still annoyed about you cutting the session short, though. I mean, it’s a nice afternoon, I could have planned to do something else if I’d known.’

  She can’t resist, ‘I thought you said you were tired.’ She sees his jaw stiffen, and realises she’s goading him again. Why does she do it? ‘Look it was really stupid of me to make other arrangements,’ she says, hastily. ‘Will you forgive me? Pleeease? I promise never to do it again.’

  He sighs and undoes his collar button.

  She draws in the shape of the shirt collar, the line of the shoulder, the way the jacket falls open at the front. She shades in the area around the throat shadowed by his neck; studies him on the paper, hands down by his side, bottom slightly forward, sitting back in his chair.

  He sighs, ‘I don’t know what I thought. I suppose I could become a modern Dorian Grey. You could hide me away in your attic.’

  What is he on about now? ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’

  He laughs at his own joke. ‘The drawings you are doing of me. You could put them away in an attic so I remain young and beautiful.’

  She should really broach the subject with him, tell him he may, if she’s lucky, end up hanging on a gallery wall. She could even sell him, she laughs to herself, into slavery, that would shut him up.

  ‘A nice sunny attic with a skylight, like in here, eh?’ She peers up to the light above her head. He chuckles. She breathes a sigh of relief, returns to her drawing. The skewed line of his shoulder, the tension in his neck, tendons taut above his shirt collar, the well-tailored collar of his jacket that fits snugly around his neck, are all etched sharply by the light; the raised crown of the sleeve, slightly above the line of the shoulder, crimped like the edge of a pie, the slight fullness of the cloth, perfect in their displacement. The sun is shining directly down on him. She notices that there are beads of sweat on his top lip.

  ‘Have you nearly finished this pose? I need to move.’

  ‘Are you getting too hot?’

  ‘I’m boiling. I need to move out of the sun.’

  ‘Right, have a rest then. I’m just popping to the loo. Would you like another coffee fetching?’

  ‘I’m okay, thanks. Two in one day, that would be spoiling me.’

  When she re-enters the room Edward is standing at the window with his back to her. She notices something strange about his jacket where it hangs over the back of the chair. She observes with interest that the tiny orange speck in the tweed is almost an exact match with the orange of the chair, but there is something else.

  She walks behind the chair and surveys the jacket. ‘There’s something odd about your jacket. Why doesn’t it drape over the chair properly? It’s all askew.’

  Edward turns. ‘It’s moulded to the shape of my back. Not the chair.’

  ‘Doesn’t it just go like that with time?’

  ‘No, no.’ He walks over to the chair and pokes his stick up the inside of the jacket, accentuating the nub that has been moulded to fit his shape. ‘I have my very own pattern. Good, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I understand.’

  He lowers himself back down into his chair. ‘I’ll explain while you’re drawing. How would you like me to sit?’

  God, he’s keen now, she thinks, her words must have hit home. ‘Can you sit sideways on the chair?’

  ‘Like this?’ He turns his body and drapes an arm over the back of the chair.

  She nods, ‘And would you roll your sleeves up a bit?’

  ‘Getting a bit carried away, aren’t we?’

  She smiles. He begins to roll the shirt cuff up his arm, creating a fat sausage of white fabric just above the elbow. She studies his back. His shirt, unlike his jacket, is pulled in several directions, the yoke cutting across the slope of the hump.

  Angela draws his head, thrust forward, the shortened neck, and then the line of the shoulder. ‘It’s really difficult trying to make out how the bones sit under your shirt.’ She draws the profile of his back, ‘There, I think that’s right. Do you have a special pattern for your shirts as well?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t quite run to that expense. Have I got on a shirt with a yoke across the back?’

  ‘If a yoke is where you have a separate piece of fabric that runs across about a third of the way down your back, then yes.’

  ‘I meant to put on a different one. I have some that drop straight from the shoulder. They’re better, but they’re a bit hard to get hold of these days.’

  He closes his eyes, rests his chin on the back of the chair and listens to the faint scratching of charcoal on paper. It sounds like a mouse behind a skirting board. He remembers the bag propped against the wall, over in the corner. Will he have the courage to give it to her today? He must. But he is weary now, perhaps too weary to find the courage.

  He opens his eyes. ‘I was going to tell you about my jacket, wasn’t I? It’s custom made, just for me, you know? My Uncle Ruben was a tailor, and he could craft me a jacket so that it fitted like a glove. My back wasn’t always like this. It became gradually worse over time so poor Uncle Ruben, as well as supplying me with a couple of new jackets every year, had to redraft the pattern every time. I would go to his factory and he would measure me this way and that, clucking away to himself, comparing my measurements to the previous year. Luckily, since he left, my shape hasn’t altered much, so when I want a new jacket I just take the special pattern that I keep hidden under my mattress along to the tailor.

  ‘What happened to Uncle Ruben?’

  ‘He left, went to America.’

  ‘And have you never thought to visit him?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Well, you speak so fondly of him.’

  ‘You know, the strangest thing is, he used to love doing my jackets. He said it was the only time he got to use all his skills. This is one of his.’ He fingers the cuff of his jacket. ‘I dread to think how old it is.’

  ‘I love the colours. You have
one with a mauve tinge in don’t you? It makes me think of the moors with speckles of moss and heather.’

  He nods, ‘Harris Tweed. Have you never heard of Harris Tweed?’

  She shakes her head and he continues, ‘Originally, it was made by crofters on hand looms, in their own homes. Uncle Ruben used to hate Harris Tweed. Said the fabric was much narrower than normal, owing to it being made on a handloom. Instead of just being able to lay out his pattern pieces quickly, he used to have to plot the new layout to get the maximum fabric usage. Very expensive fabric you see. Aren’t I boring you with all this?’

  ‘No, I’m fascinated. I can really visualise what you’re saying. It’ll help me, I think. I want to know how he got the jacket to fit your back.’

  ‘I’m just coming to that. As far as I can remember, to take measurements for a jacket, they use a certain formula. With a hunched back you have to first work out what the proportions would be without the hump, and then again with the hump, so that the area and size of the hump can be allowed for in the fitting. I think what the tailor does is put the fullness into the right area, like you would do for a breast dart on a woman, except they incorporate the fullness into the seam. Then there are other considerations, like the different width and height of the shoulders, and the shortness of the neck. Most of the change occurs in the pattern and then a bit of manipulation is required in the making process.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Steaming, mostly. He had a specially shaped pad, similar to the shape of my back, that he would drape the back of the jacket over and steam-in the shape. You can mould wool into almost any shape, did you know? I always had to have pure wool and there were certain rules about fabric design as well. My uncle would never let me have a check or a stripe fabric, or something with a definite pattern. As he said, it would only accentuate my deformity. I had to have plain cloth, or something like a tweed.’

  She looks at her watch, ‘I’ll be a tailor by the time you’ve finished with me.’

  He is feeling better, he wants to sit here with her all afternoon until the light begins to fade. She takes a container of fixative out of her bag and shakes it. ‘I’m going to have to go.’ The tin rattles like a penny in a can.

  ‘May I just take a quick look?’

  Angela stops rattling the tin. Edward sees she has captured something of him that he likes. His own face stares back at him, carved out in bold black lines that somehow manage to be him. The second drawing, with his face resting in his hand, is softer, smudged, less defined, yet in the eyes there is humour. Does she see humour in his eyes?

  Edward walks back along the corridor. He takes a sideways swipe at the heating pipes, and listens as the sound clangs and bongs back down the corridor. Again he can hear Alex’s voice coming from upstairs. He remembers Angela’s words. ‘He really gets up your nose doesn’t he?’ She was right there. He opens the front door.

  Next week. Next week, he will give her the bra. He bangs the box against his leg. He will have to remember to take it to work with him on Monday so that Mrs Ingram doesn’t find it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Where are you taking me today?’ Rachel says, by way of a greeting.

  ‘The Blue Moon.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘It’s on Norfolk Street.’

  The sun is hot and glints off the steel street furniture on Fargate. The grey cobbles of Italian granite press up through Rachel’s soles, displacing her thin heels. They turn off down Norfolk Street. Outside a café, people are seated at white metal tables.

  ‘Why did you choose here, Edward?’

  He looks at her, shading his eyes from the sun, ‘Why? Don’t you like it?’

  She peers in through the doorway, ‘Not quite up to your usual standard.’

  ‘I thought you might like a change, somewhere a bit more casual.’

  ‘Why?’ she says. ‘I like going to nice places.’

  Edward pulls out a chair and nods towards the café, ‘Shall we give it a try?’

  Reluctantly, she sits down. ‘I’m not sure it’s quite warm enough to sit outside yet.’

  ‘I think,’ Edward says, ‘that the menu is written on the chalk-board inside.’

  He asks the girl behind the counter to bring the board out to their table. Rachel chooses a Stilton and Broccoli quiche, with salad and new potatoes. He has a leek and mushroom bake in a round earthenware dish.

  ‘You said in your letter, Mother, that you went to Leeds.’

  She nods, her mouth still full.

  ‘Did you go to the art gallery? If I remember rightly, there are some very fine Grimshaws there. Do you remember that time you took me?’

  ‘I never took you, Edward.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, or was it Father?’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t take you either. Wasn’t his sort of thing.’

  ‘He did take me. I remember now. You’d gone to visit your mother in the Infirmary. We arranged to meet you at the station and it was raining and Father couldn’t make up his mind whether to catch the bus out to the museum at Kirkstall or to take me in the Art Gallery. Then suddenly he said: ‘Let’s go in the art gallery, lad. I haven’t been in there for years. I used to love going in there as a kid’.’

  ‘Well, he never told me about it.’ Rachel says.

  ‘Maybe it was his little secret.’

  ‘He probably went on a school visit once.’

  Edward shakes his head in disbelief. ‘You’d never allow the poor man any graces, would you? Or allow me the illusion of him having had any.’

  ‘Your father always said he was a simple man, with simple pleasures. And he was.’

  ‘And does that not include art?’

  ‘Can you ever remember any other instances where he was interested in art, reading, or anything else cultural? I’m not trying to discredit him. I’m simply telling the truth.’

  ‘Why did you marry him if you had so little in common?’

  Rachel examines Edward’s face. There is something strange about him today, he seems agitated. What can she say to him? She shrugs, ‘Why does anyone get married?’

  ‘For love?’

  ‘Very rarely, I fear. We got married because we met and there was no one else, and it just sort of happened.’

  ‘Do you think he loved you?’

  Where has this line of questioning come from? She wonders. After all these years why does he want to dig all this up? ‘Yes, I think he did in his own way.’

  ‘But his love wasn’t good enough.’

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t think it was me that wasn’t good enough for him.’ She is gratified to see him redden slightly. He changes the subject, ‘How’s your lunch?’

  ‘Contrary to all expectations, it’s very nice. Just a shame about the lack of ambience.’

  ‘What more could you want, Mother? The sun is out, you have a clear blue sky, and my company.’

  ‘More comfortable chairs.’

  ‘There, I have to agree with you.’

  She raises her fork daintily to her lips and chews slowly whilst busying herself in preparation for the next mouthful. ‘By the way, did I tell you that girl, Angela, came to see me? She brought me that portrait.’

  ‘The one of your father?’

  Rachel nods.

  ‘Are you going to tell me, Mother, how you are related to that French woman?’

  ‘Oh, you do go on. My father’s mother was French. All right?’

  ‘Why don’t you ever want to talk about these things?’

  ‘What’s the point? They’re all in the past.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you see,’ Edward says, gesturing with his hands, ‘that’s why I want to talk about them.’

  ‘She seems a nice enough girl. Interested, almost passionate, about art.’

  ‘I presume we’re talking about Angela, now.’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiles. ‘Someone in the present.’

  ‘She asked me to model for her.’


  Rachel thinks she has misheard. ‘What did you say?

  ‘She’s asked me to model for her.’

  Rachel feels her face stiffen. ‘What a nerve. What did you say?’

  ‘I’ve been going to her studio for about a month now.’

  He sounds very pleased with himself.

  She ponders for a moment, ‘Not … nude?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ She shakes her head. ‘Why on earth would she want to draw you?’

  ‘Maybe, unlike you and most other people, she doesn’t find me grotesque.’

  ‘She’s using you, more like. How dare she?’

  ‘I am a grown man,’ he says quietly. ‘Perfectly capable of looking after myself.’

  ‘Edward, you mustn’t let her do this. It’s wrong, very wrong.’

  His voice rises in pitch, ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  ‘What do you think she is going to do with the drawings when she’s finished? Put them in a drawer and forget about them? No. She’s going to display them. Tell me you feel comfortable having your naked body paraded before the world.’

  ‘You mean, like a freak show?’

  She notices the tone of his voice is now lower. ‘Always you have to twist what I say. Look at you. You walk through life hoping no-one will notice you and then some girl comes along and flatters your vanity and you end up naked. What if you got your portrait in the newspaper? How would that feel?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother. I won’t tell them I’m Rachel Anderson’s son –the woman who surrounds herself with beauty, but didn’t quite manage it with her son. Anyway, what about when you did it?”

  She searches his face. Surely, she thinks, he doesn’t know, couldn’t know. How could he?

  ‘Did what?’ she whispers.

  He looks down into his lap and fiddles with the end of his tie.

  ‘Edward? Did what?’ Her voice is unsteady.

  He looks straight at her. ‘When you were an artist’s model?’

  She finds it difficult to take in what he has just said. He wasn’t alluding to Uncle Jack after all, but this. ‘How did you find out about that?’ She sits back in her chair.

  ‘Angela told me. Were you doing it while Father was still alive? While I was still living at home?’