by Peter Helton
‘I’m staying here until half past,’ she said now in a voice that had regressed a little towards stubborn-teenager tones. ‘It’s bloody ridiculous. Look at them all. It’s not a funeral, it’s a carnival.’
‘It’s what he wanted.’ I went out through the French doors, leaving them open in case she wanted to follow after all. Bartók’s Concerto had come to a hectic end and had been replaced with an eerie piece for piano, percussion and celeste. Dusk was now settling over Batcombe and shadows were creeping out from the eaves of the forest, and as I skirted the giant mechanical spider and the sentinels of other rusting sculpture the first wax flares were being lit by the pond. With her painted Dali moustache Anne was not going to be alone; almost immediately I saw two more Dalis, though they had gone to a little more trouble than merely pencilling a moustache under their noses. I did not immediately recognize all references: a heavily drinking man in densely bespattered painting gear could have been Jackson Pollock – though the original hardly ever got paint on himself – and he was chatting up a floor-length Klimt painting with gold hair. Some costumes were more elaborate than others; I saw two Van Goghs and an Andy Warhol, which didn’t require much work, but the girl that came as Van Gogh’s ear must have beavered away all week in the sculpture shed for her all-enveloping fleshy costume. Claire the administrator had come as a seventeenth-century Flemish scullery maid and was talking earnestly to a young Rembrandt.
There was a bar, itself trying to look like it had sprung from a Manet painting, where I bought a bottle of Newcastle Brown from the nineteenth-century barmaid. ‘Good costume,’ she said as she handed me my change. I managed to find Kroog leaning against a brutalist abstract wood sculpture that had been cut with a chainsaw from a large tree trunk and had since split down the middle. It had a sputtering wax flare stuck in one of its cracks. Kroog was puffing her pipe and nodding approvingly at me as I approached. Next to her stood the tall Alex, keeping pace with Kroog’s drinking and smoking. Kroog wore no costume, and as far as I could see, neither did Alex.
‘Glad you made it,’ Kroog said. ‘Self-portrait with cushion, quite convincing.’
‘And you have come as yourself after all.’
‘Sheer arrogance, I know.’
I turned to Alex. ‘What have you come as?’
Alex spread her arms out at right angles, revealing a fringe of twelve-inch rust-coloured tassels hanging from her sleeves. ‘Angel of the North.’
‘Witty and economical.’
Alex accepted my appraisal with a slight bow and indicated her empty wine glass before strolling away towards the bar. For a while we just stood and passed occasional comment on the various efforts. Catherine Stott, the graphics tutor, had made a surprising effort as the Girl with a Pearl Earring. Dan Small, the potter, was one of several Picassos. The student pulling along the The Death of Marat in a plastic bathtub on wheels stopped every so often to explain noisily to people that he had come as ‘THE SCREAM!’ by Munch. Stars were appearing in the darkening sky. Bartók’s eerie music and the quiet conversations everywhere made this the strangest student party I had ever attended. Then a sudden hush spread from the direction of the main building right at the edge of the pond.
Anne had appeared on the lawn. She was flanked by two torch-bearing students in near identical Dali costumes. I thought that for someone reputed not to have an artistic bone in her body, Anne certainly had a flair for the dramatic. She carried the cardboard urn of her father’s ashes before her with exaggerated dignity and slowness, which lent her procession a degree of absurdity she probably had not intended. Yet it had the desired effect on the students: a corridor was cleared for her so that she could walk straight towards the edge of the pond to deposit the ashes in its dark waters. But even before she could enter the now quiet circle, a sudden movement in the darkness beyond the reach of the flares caught my eye. Something was approaching from the dark, and it was huge.
The giant metal spider was on the move. Ten foot high, with eight horned and spiky legs that protruded from a body consisting of electric motors and two banks of car batteries, it crept forward towards our gathering in jerking, juddering movements. It had yellow headlamps for eyes and was a terrifying machine.
‘Boris!’ Kroog exclaimed beside me. ‘But Boris hasn’t moved for years!’
It was moving now, with a shocking speed for a machine so large and complicated. And it scuttled straight towards Anne Birtwhistle. The torch bearers deserted her and fled in opposite directions as though it had been choreographed. For a moment Anne stood and stared with disbelief at the giant sculpture bearing down on her, then she ran towards us. Motors whirred and limbs clanked as the spider changed direction with astonishing alacrity to try and cut her off. Anne saw it and changed direction too. Collective gasps of fright and astonishment accompanied every move, as though from an audience watching a high-wire act. With a wild and frantic scuttling motion the menacing machine pursued Anne towards the edge of the pond, getting closer with every jerk. When its spiky legs were hacking at her very heels Anne flung herself into the water of the pond where for a moment she half submerged, holding the urn clear of the water, then fought to get to her feet, utterly drenched. There was suppressed laughter here and there but most were as shocked as I was at the sudden transformation from funereal tableau to Hollywood horror. The mechanical spider took a couple more steps towards the dripping Anne but finally seemed to run out of strength, motors whirring uselessly, with its legs stuck in the muddy bank.
Anne tottered and fought for balance in the muddy pond. For a short moment, before several students rushed in to assist her, she stood still, silently dripping, her head lowered like an animal about to charge. If this had been a cartoon, which it so clearly resembled, steam would have escaped from her ears and nostrils. She accepted with bad grace the help of a couple of students in getting back to dry land. There she stood for a moment, dripping with anger, one shoe lost. She turned, wrenched the lid off the urn and flung the ashes in a wide arc across the water of the pond. Then she pointedly let the urn drop to the ground and hobbled unevenly but erect with head held high towards the house. Students retreated before her wrath.
‘What just happened here?’ I asked Kroog, who was calmly refilling her pipe as though nothing had happened.
‘Boris. Kinetic sculpture. A few of my students built him a couple of years ago. It’s got solar panels on top to charge the batteries. But it hasn’t worked for ages. Remarkable.’
Students were now crowded around the thing, trying to pull the creature from the reeds. Anne meanwhile had disappeared into the dark.
‘But … the thing knew where it was going!’ To me it had seemed to be possessed of a will and intelligence and had changed direction several times.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure of it.’
‘It definitely followed Anne.’
‘It picked on the one non-artist in the gathering, how uncanny,’ she said and lit her pipe with a match from a big box of kitchen matches. ‘It’s remotely controlled, like a toy car. I haven’t seen the remote for years, I don’t think. I wonder who found it. Oh look, there’s Greg. We are honoured.’
At the edge of the lit area I could see the feeble effort of a straw-hatted Van Gogh that was one per cent Dutchman and ninety-nine per cent Landacker. Someone had furnished him with a glass of wine which he sipped with visible distaste; he probably hadn’t drunk anything this cheap for many years.
‘Why do I get the feeling you are trying to change the subject, Lizzie?’
‘Not at all. You want to talk about kinetic sculpture, go ahead. Ask me anything. Though I might need another drink before I can make any kind of answer.’ As if telepathically summoned, Alex appeared and wordlessly handed Kroog a fresh bottle of beer, then walked on without comment to watch the spidery rescue operation. I couldn’t help noticing that rather more students were helping to pull out Boris than had offered to help Anne Birtwhistle.
‘Someone just attacked the school’s owner and
you seem very calm about it.’
‘You’re over-dramatizing, Honeypot.’
‘But you said yourself that the thing was remotely controlled.’
‘A student prank. I don’t think Boris would have hurt her if he had caught up with her. As it is, I think the intention was probably just what did happen, to chase poor Anne into the pond. I’d be surprised if John wouldn’t have approved. He did think Anne was a bit of a dry stick. He always preferred Henry. Henry is chaotic but fun.’
‘A bit like this place, really, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Not at all.’ She clinked her bottle against mine. ‘John always liked a good shambles, as long as it was a creative shambles.’
Now that the ceremony was definitely over, the music changed from Bartók to dance music and the character of the gathering changed to something more akin to a normal art student party. Kroog and I strolled in step to the outskirts of the action. Claire overtook us, walking towards the house. ‘That went better than expected, don’t you think?’ she said neutrally.
‘Perfect,’ said Kroog, which reminded me that she probably felt the loss of John Birtwhistle more keenly than anybody and that the chaotic scattering-of-the-ashes ceremony had lacked any kind of dignity, even though Anne’s dip in the pond had momentarily cheered her.
‘You have made a start on your painting, I hear. Very brave of you to paint under public scrutiny. How are you finding it?’
Three days earlier I had established my new, temporary workplace in Studio One. The operation had been, as Annis had predicted so eloquently, mental. During many years of working in a spacious shambolic studio I had accumulated a phenomenal amount of outlandish home-made oil and varnish mixes, mediums made from exotic resins and a hundred and one other things, which I discovered, while packing, that I couldn’t possibly work without. My glass palette, for instance. Which had set solid into twenty years’ worth of dried oil paint that had solidified into multicoloured swirls and ripples. This meant taking the entire table. Which had, on closer inspection, stuck itself to the floor by the same method as the palette to the table. I wanted my own studio easel, naturally, and cratefuls of bottles, from Venice turpentine to Damar varnish; every tube of paint I owned (including the spares or else I’d worry); armfuls of brushes of which I would use probably five but I would feel uncomfortable if the other hundred and twenty weren’t standing in their buckets; oil rags, of course, and a stretched canvas. Lastly, my painting stool, which was just the right height for sitting in front of an unfinished painting in an attitude of quiet despair.
Mental.
‘I told the students they could drop in any time they feel like it if they want to talk about something, or even just to watch.’
‘And have they?’
‘I leave the doors wide open most of the time but so far only Phoebe has come to watch me paint. She sat for hours.’
‘Good.’
‘She sniffles. Hayfever.’
‘Does it disturb you?’
‘Drives me up the wall.’
‘Good, good.’ We had reached the front of the house where two feeble bulbs in grimy lanterns nearly illuminated the car park. ‘It was certainly a memorable send-off,’ Kroog said as we stopped and looked back towards the figures dancing by the pond. She broke into a richly rumbling cough that went on for some time. ‘I must have a think about my own funeral sometime,’ she said when it had subsided. ‘I think I’d quite enjoy being scattered here. Not cremated. Just … scattered, you know?’ She walked off towards the bothy, in front of which I could dimly make out the black silhouette of the angel of the north, her wings spread wide.
NINE
‘Music is the most completely abstract art form there is. Even though some pieces of music may be directly inspired by events or places, in no way can they be said to be directly descriptive of a place.’
A charcoal-blackened hand shot up. ‘But what about music like Finlandia, for instance?’ The drawing-obsessed Ben looked defiant near the French windows. Studio Two, where I was hectoring my students, was crammed with painters sitting on chairs, stools, pots of primer, on the floor or else were leaning against the wall and each other.
‘True, it’s called Finlandia,’ I admitted. ‘But if I’d never heard it before and you played it to me, would you expect me to say “Oh, yeah, that’s Finland, that is, just east of Kristinestad”? Possibly not. The point I am trying to make is that while music has mood and tone etcetera and can be called abstract, that doesn’t mean it’s just a collection of pretty notes played one after another or at the same time.’ Appreciative nods here and there. ‘It is rigorously structured. It has rhythm, it has a form, often a well-known form like the sonata or the symphony.’ The odd sigh. Yeah, yeah, we know all that. ‘And music isn’t composed by mooning around at the piano, striking keys at random to see if anything comes up. Abstract painting needs structure. It almost always benefits from being anchored in something tangible out there in the real world. And it definitely benefits from preliminary colour sketches.’ Some uncomfortable stirrings. This sounded like work. ‘Painting is work. Playtime is over. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t enjoy it but great art will not miraculously pour forth from your brushes by pushing paint around and hoping for the best.’ I could see a few faces drop. ‘Of course the figurative painters among you will find this project a breeze. So go out there and produce twenty-five drawings and sketches, I don’t mind what of, but stay within half a mile of here.’
‘Why?’ Phoebe wanted to know. ‘Why within half a mile?’
‘Because you may have to lug an easel there later.’
General groans. I could see that Hiroshi seemed particularly put out. His forest-inspired painting was entirely based on photographs and he hadn’t reckoned with having to take pen and paper out there. I could also see that being taught, being told what to do and being given projects to complete came as quite a shock to many of my students. My predecessor must have had an extremely laissez-faire attitude, as Kroog had hinted. After the way she had introduced me to the students I now had a reputation to live up to. If any of them ever found out what I was really like I would probably end up in the pond.
‘We’ve talked a lot about abstract art,’ Hiroshi said, ‘but you yourself have recently moved from abstract painting to figurative work. Why?’
‘Because I’m a very strange man,’ I said and walked out of Studio Two into Studio One to look at my own work and to try and fathom just how strange my painting had become. I had revived a method I had first hit on in my own art school days. I would go and find something to draw outside, then take the drawings to the studio and start work on the canvas. Periodically during the painting process I would dash outside again with my sketchbook to draw the same thing or place from various angles, then take the treasure of drawings and sketches back to the studio until my inspiration needed topping up again. Then I had been painting multilayered abstract paintings, now I was engaged in doing the same but in a way that recognizably depicted a locality.
I had chosen a spot deep in Summerlee Woods, in a small circular clearing where I had stumbled on an abandoned kiln. It consisted of a round tower-like structure, roughly made from local rocks of all shapes and sizes, set into a bank of earth. Leading into it was a brickwork tunnel with a domed roof. The arched opening was littered with broken pottery and the area in front of it deeply stained with charcoal. Nearby lay a large woodpile of yard-long logs as thick as my arm but it was clear that the kiln had not been used for a long time. The whole place had become overgrown with ferns and brambles. The opening of the tunnel was just wide enough to admit a person at a crouch but nothing on earth could have persuaded me to squeeze myself inside.
Apart from a few thumbnail sketches to work out the overall structure of the thing, I had only made one detailed drawing, of a storm-damaged oak that had fallen across the clearing next to the kiln. This I had begun to render in oils on my canvas but it felt wholly inadequate now. I would have t
o go and snatch another piece of reality with my sketchbook to drag back to the studio. The fact that there was method in my madness would only become apparent if I pulled it off. I had brought a shoulder bag in which to carry my drawing kit for my field studies. I chucked in a sketchbook in landscape format. But my painting was in portrait format so I threw one of those in as well. I had a bulging pencil wrap of graphite pencils of various grades, from H to 6B, something I had never bothered with as an abstract painter. I packed a knife and sandpaper for sharpening; also a soft white eraser and a hard plastic one for cutting highlights. Naturally I would want to do one or two colour sketches too. For this I packed a twenty-four-colour watercolour paintbox and some brushes and a tube of white gouache; a small(ish) block of watercolour paper went in as well. I added a bottle of masking fluid to preserve highlights in the watercolour sketches and another of granulation medium which would come in handy for the textures. Some kitchen roll to wipe my brushes on completed the kit. No, wait! I would need water for doing watercolours. I filled a litre bottle of water at the paint-encrusted Bristol sink in the corner. A couple of old jam jars to pour it into. There, I was ready. Or would have been if I could have lifted the bag. It weighed half a ton. ‘This is ridiculous,’ I said to the studio in general.
‘That is why I use a camera. Mine weighs two-hundred grams.’ I had not noticed Hiroshi come in, even though at six foot tall and with his broad shoulders he ought to have been easy to spot.
‘Yes, but your camera lies to you,’ I said distractedly as I stared into my bag looking for the housebricks that had obviously concealed themselves in there.
‘How so? The photograph does not lie.’
I decided to leave one of the sketchbooks behind. But which? ‘The camera does not see even remotely like the human eye does. Look at my face,’ I demanded. ‘Look into my eyes.’ He did as I asked. ‘Your field of vision takes in half the room, with me in the centre. Behind me on the wall is a printed notice. Without taking your eyes off my face, read it.’
