‘Early medieval altar pieces and so on . . . up as far as Giotto.’
He moved on to the next row.
‘Early Renaissance Italian and the North European school – Bosch, Bruegel and so on . . . please feel free to look.’
‘Feast your eyes, children,’ said Ms Stannard. ‘Some of the highest achievements of civilization are here before us, under our mountain. Imagine that.’
Some of the girls followed her down the first row. It was just boxes. A lot of boxes, but just boxes.
Lester was on another row now. ‘High Renaissance Italian up as far as Raphael . . .’
Ms Stannard stopped him. ‘Am I right in thinking,’ she said, ‘that they are all boxed?’
‘Yes. Oh yes, of course. These are valuable works of art. We have to take extreme care. We check the humidity, the temperature, the dust content . . .’
‘Yes, but . . . can we look at any of the paintings?’
‘Oh no. My word, no. Do you mean, take them out of their boxes? No, no, no, no.’ He made it sound like they might run away. ‘Well, I hope that’s given you some sense of what we’re about here. Perhaps you’d like to follow me back up . . .’
Ms Stannard wasn’t going to budge though. ‘Children, take a look at the ceiling,’ she said.
We all looked up. It was steep and pointy, like a massive rock tent or the roof of a house, and it was covered in marks and shiny wet. And while I was looking up at it, Terrible Evans gave me a rabbit punch in the kidneys. I doubled over and she took my other Mars bar.
‘This is not a natural cave,’ said Ms Stannard. ‘It was cut from the living rock by your grandfathers and their fathers before them. They used their bare hands, chisels and hammers. And, a bit later, small explosive charges. It took the best part of a hundred years to carve it out. Look, it’s like a secret cathedral. And strangely enough, it’s called a gallery. And now this one is filled with art, so it’s an art gallery.’
I was trying not to notice, but Terrible was now chewing my Mars bar behind my back, right next to my ear.
‘You might say,’ said Ms Stannard, ‘that this is their work of art.’
‘No, no,’ said Lester. ‘It’s very impressive, but it’s a work of engineering. Excavation. Whatever. Not art.’
‘Well, you say that, Lester,’ said Ms Stannard, ‘but who are you to say? You think these wooden boxes are works of art.’
‘No. They contain works of art. Great works of art. The greatest, actually.’
Ms Stannard kept on at him. ‘How can something be a work of art if no one can see it? It’s only a work of art when someone’s looking at it. At least we’re looking at this ceiling.’
And just as she said that, Terrible thumped me in the kidneys again.
I’d had enough. I turned on her. She grinned and ran off, back up the tunnel. I went after her. I chased her up the steep passageway. I could hear her footsteps ahead of me and the boomy voices of Lester and Ms Stannard arguing behind me.
Suddenly the footsteps ahead stopped. I started running quicker, thinking I’d get her now. Then I stopped. There was a scream. A terrible scream, blasting past me down the tunnel. They must have heard it in the big cave, because the boomy voices stopped and the next thing I heard was a hundred footsteps hurrying up the tunnel.
The scream came again. And before I had time to think, I was running towards it. I got to the top. It was coming from that little room off the main entrance, the one where we’d looked at the picture of the Madonna. I pushed the door open and Terrible turned to face me. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped. She could barely catch her breath. ‘Sorry. I thought it was real.’
She was pointing to the corner where the Madonna had been and I nearly screamed too. There was another picture, of a different woman, an ugly woman. But when I say ugly, I don’t mean not nice-looking. I mean, her face should have been certificate eighteen. She had great big nostrils, pointing out at you like a pair of truck exhausts, and as for her eyes, well, I’ve seen bigger on a potato. Her skin was all wrinkly like an old balloon, especially her neck, which was like a turkey’s. Her clothes were old-fashioned, like from history. She had this random thing on her head. I suppose it was a hat, but it looked more like half a couch. The worst thing was, she was coming out of her dress at the top. If the painter had painted her a minute later, well, you don’t want to think about that.
The others had caught up with me by now. They were crowding in through the door. Minnie came over and stood next to me.
‘It isn’t real, is it?’ said Terrible. ‘Is it a photograph or what?’
‘It’s a painting,’ said Minnie, and then she said very, very quietly to me, ‘and it’s not by Michelangelo.’
I whispered, ‘Thanks.’
Lester had come in now. ‘If you could just step back a little please.’ He was obviously worried that someone might breathe on his painting. ‘Step back, please. Everyone.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been distressed,’ he went on. ‘But do feel free to leave. As I said, I’m only too happy to have the paintings to myself.’
But Terrible was trying to bring her heartbeat down. ‘That’s a painting? Why would anyone want to paint that? Why?’
‘What a good question,’ said Ms Stannard. ‘Lester, what’s the answer?’
She was talking to him now like he was in Year Six. And the best thing was, he replied!
‘Well,’ he said, and he really should have kept his mouth shut, ‘there are several schools of thought on the matter. Some see it as a simple comic grotesquerie. Some as a satirical comment on the foolishness of old women who dress in a way that is inappropriate to their years.’
He was staring at Ms Stannard when he said this. She glared back at him.
‘Shouldn’t be allowed,’ said Jade Porty.
‘I imagine that’s what the artist is trying to say,’ said Lester.
‘No, I mean the picture shouldn’t be allowed,’ said Jade. ‘It’s upsetting. Very upsetting. It upsets me completely. If I looked like that, I’d hide myself, not go getting my portrait painted and shoving it in other people’s faces. There is no need for that, no need at all. It’s not necessary, that isn’t. No wonder you’re putting it down a mine. Are they all like that?’
I’d never seen anyone so revved up. And all the time she was saying this stuff, the girls behind her were nodding their heads and agreeing with her.
‘It’s interesting. Dylan and I were talking just the other day about Michelangelo.’ When he said that, everyone looked at me. They looked at me funny, like he’d said, ‘The other day Dylan and I fell down a sewer and were turned into Ninjas by a talking rat.’ Lester kept going. ‘We were saying that art is about beauty. And of course until Michelangelo – in the Middle Ages, for instance – artists mostly saw beauty as a temptation to sin. Michelangelo was almost the first to celebrate human beauty for its own sake. And yet here we have someone doing just the opposite. Looking at ugliness. It’s quite radical . . .’
I said, ‘Dude.’ I couldn’t help myself. You hear the word ‘radical’ and you say ‘dude’. It’s normal behaviour. Unfortunately, it also reminded him that I was there.
‘Dylan,’ he said, ‘step forward and take a closer look. Tell us what you think.’
I walked over to the picture just to try and kill time. It was about life-size in a neat wooden frame, so it was like looking in a mirror. I wondered if the woman in the picture ever looked in a mirror. Maybe they didn’t have them then. Maybe she didn’t even know what she looked like till she saw the painting. I said to myself, Dylan, there’s only four things you know about painting – the names of four painters. It’s not Michelangelo because Minnie said so. Donatello does machines, which this isn’t. Raphael is cool, which this definitely isn’t. So that leaves Leonardo. So that’s what I said. I said, ‘Leonardo?’
I could hear Minnie sucking her teeth. I could feel everyone else holding their breath, waiting to see if I’d said the wrong thing or not.
Lester said, ‘Remarkable.’
And everyone started breathing again, including me.
Lester was saying, ‘Of course, it’s not actually by Leonardo. In fact it’s Dutch, but the influence is clearly there, in the brushwork, of course. And also in the subject matter. The picture bears an uncanny resemblance to a sketch in one of Leonardo’s notebooks. Leonardo, as you know, was as fascinated by ugly faces as he was by beautiful ones. He made hundreds of drawings of them. Whether from life or from his imagination, we don’t know. But he never made one the main subject of a painting as this man did. His name is Massys, by the way. Quentin Massys. My namesake.’
‘I thought your name was Lester,’ said Ms Stannard.
‘Actually, Lester is my surname. My first name is Quentin.’
‘Oh,’ said Ms Stannard. ‘I see.’
And then he started to talk about how amazing and unexpected it was that this Dutch painter had worked so closely with Leonardo all those years ago. But none of us was listening. We were all standing there thinking, Quentin?!
He said, ‘It’s as though Massys is saying, “Yes, there is beauty in humanity, but not everyone is beautiful. There is ugliness too.”’
‘You’ve either got it,’ said Jade Porty, ‘or you haven’t.’
She definitely thinks she has, which shows how much she knows.
Lester said, ‘Well, I hope you’ve all found this entertaining and educational. I wish you all a safe journey down the mountain.’
Everyone started to go, but Terrible waited for a bit. Then she said, ‘You’re wrong about that picture, mister.’
‘Am I really?’ said Lester.
‘He painted it so everyone would feel good. You’re just not thinking about it right.’
‘Aren’t I indeed?’
‘He’s painted someone so ugly that anyone looking at it would think, “I’m not so bad after all.” When you first see it, it’s horrible. But if you just keep looking, it makes you feel great. I feel like a million dollars now.’
Lester opened his mouth, but he said nothing. You could see she’d given him something to think about.
When we got outside, Terrible was sitting on a rock, eating my Mars bar, and the funny thing was, she did look good. Not a million dollars, but maybe half a million, or even three-quarters. The picture had been mutagenish again. It had changed her just like the shop windows had been changed. She caught me looking at her, smiled, and threw the rest of the Mars bar at me.
Back on the bus, Ms Stannard came and sat by me. What is the point of being the only boy in the school if you don’t get a seat to yourself? She said, ‘Dylan Hughes, I believe you’ve been hiding your light under a bushel. I believe you’re a lot cleverer than you let on. Leonardo. Who would have thought?’
Even though I knew it was another misunderstanding, I did start looking out of the window, wondering if it could be true. If you could get cleverer. Like the Turtles were not clever when they were just turtles, were they? They were amphibians. But then Splinter came along and they learned to be good with machines and got a Sewer Sledge and everything. Maybe sometimes a person can turn into something else.
A caterpillar doesn’t know it’s going to be a butterfly. A tadpole doesn’t know it’s going to be a frog. And when those pet turtles were flushed down a toilet, they didn’t know they were going to turn out to be Ninja Heroes – or even mutants.
16 May
Cars today:
RED TOYOTA PRIUS T4 AUTOMATIC –
Dr Ramanan (fill up, oil check, cup-a-soup)
ANOTHER RED TOYOTA PRIUS T4 AUTOMATIC
– some people I don’t know (petrol, cappuccinos)
A BLUE TOYOTA PRIUS T4 AUTOMATIC – a random person (petrol, a box of fudge)
SILVER SKODA OCTAVIA – the Ellis brothers
FORD SCORPIO – Sergeant Hunter
BLUE LEXUS – Mr Choi (petrol)
RED FORD KA – Ms Stannard (petrol)
Weather – rain (including rainbows)
Note: THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS BAD WEATHER
Friday 23 May is our busiest weekday since the logbook began. We actually ran out of cup-a-soups. We even sold a box of Manod fudge. And this was all down to Mam because she was the one who bought the umbrellas.
What happened was this: when we came back from our school trip to see the wooden boxes, Mam was in the shop. Which was a surprise because we thought she was going to Conwy Car Boot Madness. That’s a massive car-boot sale beside the harbour in Conwy. Mam never misses it. But that day she just shrugged and looked out of the window at the rain. She said, ‘Oh, guess what? It’s raining.’
On the Monday, when we told her there was no cereal left for breakfast, she did the same.
‘Looks like it’s Mars bars again,’ I said.
‘That is so unhealthy,’ said Marie. ‘You can kill yourselves if you like. I’m going to sort out a proper breakfast for myself.’ She had a Bounty, because they’ve got real coconut in them, which is very good for you.
I stuck to Mars bars and took Mars bars for lunch as well. I took an extra one because I knew that Terrible Evans would probably nick one. But she didn’t. She came and sat next to me and started chatting about the Turtles. ‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that in the original comic, Splinter wasn’t a mutant rat?’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘In the telly series, Splinter is a rat who used to be a human. But in the comics he’s a rat who was always a rat. On telly he used to be Hamato Yoshi, who mutated into a rat because of mutagen. In the comics, he was Hamato Yoshi’s pet. A pet rat. He’s supposed to have learned martial arts by copying his master’s routines. I mean, how mad is that?’
‘Well, it’s a bit mad, but so is four pizza-eating ninja turtles when you think about it.’
‘Yeah, but it’s just not credible, is it? A human who mutates into a rat is much more likely than a rat that learns martial arts, surely?’
‘Well, maybe.’
It’s possible that Terrible Evans was more interesting before she mutated.
She didn’t hit anyone all day. During morning break she spoke to Jade Porty. During maths she put her hand up twice. After school she walked up to the garage with us, and she laughed at the hens, but not in a bad way. She stood and watched while we fed them. She said, ‘Look at the way they walk – it’s hilarious!’ It is true that hens do walk funny, but I don’t think our hens are funnier than any others. They sort of lift their legs very high up before putting them down. ‘You know what they are?’ said Terrible. ‘Ninja chickens!’
While we were doing this, a van came down off the mountain. Lester hopped out of the passenger side to open the gate. We took him his Financial Times and waved him off.
‘That’s your picture,’ said Minnie, ‘the ugly-woman one. It’s going to London.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Terrible. ‘I’ve got it all up here. It’s all up here.’ She pointed to her head.
I hadn’t really thought about the vans going to London before. I watched this one disappear and wondered if Dad would go and see the picture.
Anyway, the point is, when we went indoors, there was no tea ready. I said to Mam, ‘We’re starving.’
She said, ‘Eat then,’ and carried on looking out of the window. ‘Oh! Rain,’ she said. ‘There’s a surprise.’
We were sick of Mars bars by this point, so we had soup – not cup-a-soup, proper soup out of a tin – and Quavers instead of bread. I offered some to Mam but she wasn’t interested. Marie said, ‘She’s depressed. It puts you off your food. I wish I was depressed. I might get rid of these thighs.’
Minnie said, ‘You haven’t got thighs.’
‘Everyone’s got thighs.’
This went on for ages. I stopped listening because I’d had this idea: if a painting stopped Terrible Evans being terrible, then maybe a painting could stop Mam being depressed. All I had to do was get her to come up there with me.
It turned out that that was easy. I just went in to
her and said, ‘Mam, I’ve got to go up to the quarry on Thursday because of the cakes. Can you give me a lift?’ She didn’t even look at me. She just went, ‘Whatever.’
So the next Thursday I strapped Max into the Wrangler (top speed 90 mph), which was the only vehicle we had left, and we drove up the mountain. I had to hold on to Max because his baby seat was still in the Mini. Because Mam had never been up before, I thought she’d be surprised that it was sunny on top, but she didn’t seem to notice.
The picture was still in its box. All the paintings were in boxes, but before taking one off to London Lester liked to open it up and make sure it was the right picture and that it wasn’t damaged. Then he’d put it back in the box again. ‘The whole thing should only really take about half an hour,’ he said, ‘but I like to do it on a Thursday so I have the whole weekend alone with the picture. I have it boxed up again on Sunday evening and then travel up to London with it on the Monday morning. I always accompany the Art. Just to be on the safe side.’
While Lester was talking, one of the men was undoing the box. It was surprisingly complicated. The box had a lid that fitted tight into the top. You lifted that off with a crowbar. ‘The trick is finding the groove where the crowbar fits,’ said the man. ‘It’s here, under the writing, look. Just under the “T” of National.’ Inside, the box was stuffed with straw and there were these metal brackets to hold the picture in place. The top two had little catches on them so you could undo them and lift the picture out. I couldn’t believe it. It was a picture of rain.
‘Oh no,’ I sighed.
‘You don’t like it?’ said Lester. ‘It’s too late for your taste, I imagine.’
How can a picture be late? Late for what? I just said, ‘Yeah.’
‘I thought I’d play safe for a week. This is a very popular picture.’ The painting by the way is called The Umbrellas and it’s by Renoir. It’s a picture of people standing out in the rain with their umbrellas up. Except there’s a woman at the front with a big shopping basket. She looks a bit miserable, which could be because she’s got no umbrella, or it could be because her shopping basket is possibly filling up with water. There’s a beardy bloke behind her saying something. Probably, ‘Do you want to buy an umbrella?’ It looked like any day in Manod, really. Except most people in Manod don’t have umbrellas.
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