Indelible

by Peter Helton

  ‘Shocking. What next? Powdered water, I expect.’ I went to fill the kettle in the nearest staff toilet.

  ‘Only one mugful, mind!’ called Catherine, who had found fresh fuel to keep her pot of resentment seething.

  I boiled my solitary cup of water to make supermarket instant, dropped fifty pence into the tin piggy bank, thoughtfully provided by the management, and joined the others on the sofa closest to the fireplace. There was no fire. The log basket had disappeared.

  ‘An unnecessary luxury,’ Catherine explained.

  ‘I saw her carry the basket upstairs to John’s rooms,’ said Dan. ‘I suppose that’s where our Assam tea now resides too.’

  ‘She wants me to do a complete audit of the place. And an inventory,’ Claire said gloomily.

  ‘I knew she would turn out to be a bean counter,’ Kroog rumbled bronchially. ‘Mark my words, there’ll be price tags appearing on all sorts of things soon.’

  I changed the subject. ‘I went drawing in the wood yesterday, setting a good example to the students and all that. On the way back I saw what I think was a naked man running through the forest. Wild of hair and fleet of foot.’

  Kroog pulled down the corners of her mouth. ‘You didn’t recognize him?’

  ‘I saw him only through several layers of foliage and it was gloomy and raining at the time. Not a common occurrence then, naked men in the woods?’

  ‘Well …’ Kroog shrugged. ‘They’re not usually running, no. I mean, students get up to all sorts in that wood in summer. Sometimes I think we ought to install a condom machine in there.’

  Catherine pretended to flinch. ‘Elisabeth, really.’

  ‘Oh, join the real world, Stottie,’ Kroog said.

  ‘I thought he might be an escaped life model,’ I suggested. ‘Gone feral, living off nuts and berries.’

  ‘At the rate we’re paying them, that’s quite possible,’ Kroog said.

  I left behind the gloom of the staff room, safe in the knowledge that my tenure under the new-broom management of Anne Birtwhistle was purely temporary. I hadn’t even seen a contract yet so I could, in theory, walk out any time I liked, though for the moment I was still quite enjoying the change. But when I looked at the drawing I had produced yesterday, my heart sank. It seemed lifeless to me now and the sense of achievement I had felt the day before had evaporated. Yet I did tell myself that I had learnt more about my subject and that it took my painting a little bit further. I worked on my large canvas until lunchtime. If you were not a painter and you had been watching me through the French windows, like some of the students did, you could have been forgiven for thinking that I achieved very little that morning. If you were a painter, of course, you’d have come to the same conclusion. I was glad when I had an excuse to go down to the refectory and eat a huge plate of fish and chips.

  When I eventually made it back to Studio One, I found I had company.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Come to check it out?’ I asked.

  Dawn Fowling looked just as hungover as she had when I’d last seen her, which made me wonder whether hangovers were a permanent ante meridiem feature in her life or whether perhaps she always looked like that. ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

  I nipped back into the staff room and procured a mug of the new supermarket’s own for her. Dawn rolled herself a ridiculously thin cigarette and inhaled deeply. I waited. ‘Sorry,’ she said at length, shaking her head as though her thoughts had been far away. ‘Not awake yet. Erm, did you say John would have been happy for us to work here? I see you’ve made a start. Of sorts.’

  ‘Yes, I have. Yes, he thought it would be educational. You’re thinking about it?’

  ‘I need to leave my studio by tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought you had longer than that?’

  ‘They offered me some money to move out sooner. I took it. Couldn’t afford not to.’

  ‘In that case come and work up here. It’s only until the show, but it’ll give you a small breathing space. I must warn you though, people do press their noses against the windows and they might ask you a lot of daft questions. And you’ll have to answer them, that’s the deal.’

  ‘That’s fine, I don’t mind an audience. Might have to take up pavement painting anyway, the way things are now. I have looked all over town for a studio – what am I saying, a studio “space”.’ She pulled a face and I knew what it meant: tiny clapboard compartments without heating, let out at astonishing rates. ‘And you know what the bizarre thing is? Half of them are rented by amateurs who only use them at the weekends anyway.’ We spent a healthy fifteen minutes having an ain’t-it-awful session, drinking supermarket coffee and filling the air with tobacco smoke. ‘I may have to find another job. But it doesn’t mix well with painting. I blame Van Gogh. All that suffering-for-your-art crap. Romantic clap-trap.’

  ‘Van Gogh was quite well off. His brother had a job at a gallery and kept him in funds, canvas and paints. He had the equivalent of eight grand a year and back then a meal with wine cost a few pence.’

  ‘Get me a time machine. Hey, look! Out there! Well, if it isn’t …’

  I followed the direction of her outstretched arm and saw Rachel Eade, the conceptual sculptor John had invited to show, walking slowly across the lawn in the direction of the pond. She was dressed as smartly as when I had last seen her, looking almost haute couture in this environment.

  ‘She always was a posh cow,’ Dawn assured me. ‘She’s married to a lawyer.’

  ‘That’s a bad thing, is it?’

  ‘I’m sure she has a little man to make her so-called art for her now. What’s she doing out there?’

  Rachel was standing on the grass near a confused heap of a sculpture, taking pictures of the college grounds on her mobile. Then all of a sudden she took a few quick steps forward and ducked low behind the sculpture, putting it between herself and the sculpture sheds.

  ‘Looks like she’s hiding from someone.’ It soon became clear from whom. Kroog and her shadowing angel, now without her wings, were coming up towards the house, wreathed in smoke and deep in conversation.

  ‘Ha.’ Dawn was delighted. ‘When Kroog was ill Rachel stood in for her. As soon as Kroog felt better she told Rachel that her so-called sculpture was a lazy con-trick or something equally pithy and that she deserved to be kicked up the arse for subjecting her students to it. Come on, let’s blow her cover!’ She opened the French doors wide and walked out on to the lawn where Rachel was slowly circling the rusty sculpture in a crouch, keeping it between her and Kroog. ‘Hey, Rache, what are you doing? Step back a bit, it looks better from a distance.’

  Rachel stood up as though electrified. Kroog turned to see who Dawn was hollering at, spotted Rachel and said something to Alexandra. They walked away laughing.

  But Rachel hadn’t escaped yet. Before we could close the distance between us, Anne Birtwhistle appeared in our field of vision. She must have espied Rachel’s attempt at hiding from the house and now came storming across the green, clipboard in one hand, biro in the other. ‘Hey, you there! What do you think you are doing? Who are you?’

  We all reached the sculpture together. Anne gave it a respectfully wide berth as though she now expected all sculptures to start chasing her. ‘I’m Rachel Eade. The sculptor,’ she added pointedly. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I,’ Anne said with equal emphasis, ‘am Anne Birtwhistle. The owner of this madhouse.’

  ‘Hi Rache,’ said Dawn sweetly, waggling her fingers at her.

  Anne rounded on her as though seeing yet another stranger was the absolute last straw. ‘And who on earth are you?’

  ‘Dawn Fowling. I’m in the show, too. I’ll be working up here for a bit.’ She hooked a thumb back towards the house.

  ‘Right, that’s it. The security in this place is appalling. Anyone could simply walk in and no one would know who they were and what they were up to. It’s got to stop. From now on the gates will be closed and security passes will be is
sued. We’ll need passport photos from everyone. And that includes you lot. I’ll get Claire on to it straight away.’ She turned and marched off towards the building.

  Dawn watched her disappear. ‘Blimey, things have changed around here.’

  ‘You certainly haven’t,’ Rachel said. ‘I knew you were here when I saw that clapped-out van of yours parked back there. I can’t believe it’s still going.’

  ‘Well, unlike you I was always good with my hands.’

  ‘I’m sure you were popular at school,’ Rachel said distractedly. She swept her arm in a gesture that embraced the entire lawn. ‘I decided to utilize the grounds in my piece. I’ve done some research and the original owners of Batcombe, it seems, made a lot of money from the wool trade, so …’

  Dawn cut across her. ‘Don’t tell me, it’s a dead sheep in formaldehyde. It’s been done.’

  Rachel ignored the remark. ‘I will arrange for the delivery of a couple of sheep that will be allowed to graze predetermined patterns into the lawn, signifying the exploitation of the countryside in the pre-industrial era. Or do I mean post-industrial? I was thinking of treating some of the grass with chemicals so that the sheep would eventually die from pollution, but I don’t think it’ll be right for an art school setting.’ She turned around to give Dawn a look of utter contempt. ‘And you will paint pretty swirls of cloud, as always, I expect.’

  ‘Absolutely. People prefer paintings to sheep dip.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like they’ve been voting with their wallets though, does it?’ She turned to me. ‘I’ll reserve judgement on your stuff. I’ve not come across any of it yet. I’ll be seeing you then.’

  ‘Don’t let Kroog catch you,’ Dawn said to her back. ‘You know what she thinks of your stuff.’

  Rachel kept walking but I imagined I saw her gait quicken a little. ‘Lizzie Kroog is a dinosaur,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘And we know what happened to them.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dawn as she stared at Rachel’s retreating form. ‘I’m with Ad Reinhardt when it comes to sculpture. Sculpture is what you bump into when you step back to admire a painting.’

  ‘I thought it was Baudelaire who said that.’

  ‘You’re both wrong,’ said a voice behind us. It came from Alexandra, making her way back towards the sculpture sheds. ‘It was Barnett Newman. Another idiot who painted with a roller.’

  ‘Kroog taught that one well,’ I said when Alex had disappeared. ‘What was it like when you worked here?’ I asked.

  ‘I told you. In retrospect it was bliss. Cushy. Hufnagel was teaching painting; I taught drawing and art history, Stottie did graphics and a bit of photography. Then Hufnagel got fired and I thought I’d got my chance but John hired Landacker instead. He was quite a pedestrian painter still. Someone must have dropped a tab of acid in his Horlicks because it changed so dramatically. As in really good. Is it OK if I move my stuff in then? It’s all in the van.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand. And then we’d better get some passport pictures done.’

  Dawn groaned. ‘Is that woman really in charge? It’s hard to believe.’

  We walked out to Dawn’s van. It was an old-fashioned Transit van that had been knitted from three different vehicles, judging by the various colours of its doors and panels. ‘But it works,’ said her owner. ‘And I’d be sunk without it.’ Her entire studio was crammed into the back of it. We carried boxes of paints, armfuls of stretcher pieces, crates of oils and solvents, buckets of brushes, a couple of toolboxes and a roll of canvas into Studio One. When we dropped the last load I noticed that several red-and-white NO SMOKING signs had appeared on the walls; one had been stuck right next to my work area and the old sardine tin I used as an ashtray had disappeared. ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I was fond of that tin.’

  By the time Dawn had established herself in a corner amid much grumbling about how she was going to miss the skylights of her studio, and I had managed to do a modest amount of work, the afternoon had turned to early evening. It was far too late to catch Martin Byers leaving work to see if he bought two of everything at the supermarket. Ah, what a shame. I’d have to do it some other time.

  The next day I vowed to keep an eye on the time and slip away much earlier, but the truth was that between the demands of my freshly motivated students, drawing and painting for the exhibition and listening to Dawn – who had a different studio etiquette to the one I was used to – I forgot all about Martin Byers.

  ‘You love it really, teaching up there,’ Annis said when I complained about it. ‘You haven’t stopped talking about the place since you started.’

  ‘Couldn’t do it for long. And the place is changing. John’s daughter wants to run the school like an army barracks. Which reminds me, I’ll need a passport photograph. Haven’t I still got a couple from when I had my passport renewed?’

  ‘That was seven years ago.’

  How does she remember this stuff? ‘I haven’t changed much since then, have I?’

  ‘But of course not, what was I thinking? Pass me another croissant, old bean.’

  With a quartet of fresh passport photographs drying in my pocket, I drove up to Batcombe House and handed them to Claire who gave two back to me. ‘We’re keeping one for the files. In case you run away.’ She held my pictures at arm’s length. ‘You’re planning on keeping the ringlet hair, stubbly beard and eye-patch look then? Very fetching. Anne will love it. I think she is personally laminating everyone’s IDs.’

  ‘She probably got a machine for Christmas.’

  ‘Probably asked for one, too. Absolutely everyone needs a security pass now, including the canteen staff and Stottie’s, sorry, Ms Stott’s chauffeur.’

  ‘She has a chauffeur? Just how much is the pay in this place?’

  ‘Her boyfriend. Matthew, I think? Ms Stott lost her licence.’ Claire waggled a hand in front of her mouth, signalling drink. ‘Drops her off and picks her up.’

  ‘How kind.’

  When I stepped into Studio One the French doors were wide open. There was no sign of Dawn. It was a warm, sunny day again so I didn’t mind the doors being open but it made me feel as though I might have ‘privacy issues’ after all. Security issues hadn’t at that point entered my mind yet. I stood in the doorway for a moment, ready to close it, when I saw Dawn. She was lying motionless on the grass, twenty paces from me, face up, her eyes wide open, unblinking. For a moment I stood transfixed, staring at her eyes, willing them to blink, but the only thing that moved were loose strands of her frizzy hair in the quiet breeze.

  I ran to her. ‘Dawn! Dawn!’

  She shot upright. ‘Ahh! What? You scared the hell out of me! What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ I said, feeling more than half-stupid. ‘I just couldn’t see you moving and with your eyes open …’

  ‘I was observing the clouds, I paint skyscapes, remember?’

  ‘Course you do. Right. Good. Leave you to it then.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re only the third person this morning to come and see if I’m dead. I think I’ll have a sign made: Not dead yet, just looking, thanks.’ She flopped back down on the grass.

  ‘Good idea. Get Anne to laminate it for you. In case of rain.’

  My students had without exception gone and produced drawings of a place no more than half a mile from the college, as I had asked. True, some of them had produced sketches that looked like they had spent five minutes on them, and some had obviously been so horrified by the prospect of having to lug their paints there that they had chosen a view less than a hundred paces away.

  I had them all crammed into Studio Two when I delivered my second challenge. ‘You’ve all done extremely well so far. This project comes in four parts. That was part one. Here comes part two: I want you to go out there again and paint the same view, any size, on anything you like, with three colours only. Ultramarine, Raw Umber and Raw Sienna.’ Murmurs that could mean anything from excitement to mutiny. ‘No white?’ asked Phoebe.
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  ‘You’re allowed white,’ I conceded, ‘but you’ll get Brownie points for not using it.’ I saw Hiroshi nod wisely at this. As they trooped out some of them looked like they relished the challenge, while some obviously hated the whole idea. I didn’t care; I had my own challenges to face.

  Now, as I looked at the drawing I had produced with a pencil stump and no sharpener in the wood, it looked useless to further my ambitious forest scene. I would have to refresh my memory, and this time I took several pencils, two sketchbooks, an eraser, craft knife and sandpaper for sharpening. I had also brought something to carry it in, a crafty present from Annis, a packsack that turned into a folding stool. This time, of course, I would have an easier time finding the place since I had left little stone cairns for myself and arrows fashioned from fallen twigs that indicated the direction to take.

  I got lost. I found one of the cairns, but of course I had no idea which way I should walk from there. I blundered through the undergrowth, got snared in brambles, found places I definitely hadn’t seen before, and retraced my steps. At last I came by chance across one of my arrows and marched on more confidently in the direction it indicated. Then a second one confirmed that at last I was on the right track. Before long I fetched up at a complete dead end in front of a damp, bramble-choked ditch; I had completely missed the clearing with the kiln. But how? The last arrow had only been forty paces back. I stood irresolute and annoyed with myself. How could a grown man get lost in a wood after ten minutes walking?

  Then I saw him. On the other side of the ditch, through the brambles at the top of the bank, I could see the outline of my wild man of the woods, standing very still. I thought he had his back to me, or else was densely bearded, but I saw no eyes and no movement, even when I called ‘Hey, you!’ I nearly added something stupid like ‘who are you?’ or ‘what are you doing?’, none of which was really my business. I squelched down the soft bank into the damp ditch choked with mouldering leaves and climbed up at an oblique angle along a fallen tree limb to where the brambles grew sparser, but even as I clambered up the other side I could hear fast-receding footfall. When I got to the top there was no one in sight. My phantom had either run very fast indeed or found a hollow tree to hide in. Someone had obviously tampered with my markers to make me get lost in this place and I imagined him hiding somewhere near, watching me. ‘Yes, very funny,’ I said loudly for the benefit of anyone who might be listening, and walked back, kicking the false arrows in to the weeds and knocking over the cairns as I went.