Life Class

by Allan, Gilli

  For nearly two years, Dom had occasionally stayed the night at Kitesnest House, but the idea of becoming a permanent resident had never been considered. He was in a children’s residential care home in the city. Shortly after Dom had started the art classes, which Stefan hoped would get him onto the Access Course at the local college, he dropped out of the care system. But his attendance at the class was unreliable. He now spent days at a time in the city, apparently dossing on friends’ floors, and … doing whatever it was Dom did. Stefan didn’t ask, but he had a fair idea of the boy’s lifestyle and was concerned. He made the offer that at least on the nights before classes, it would be sensible to stop over. It was barely discussed but, from then on, Dom stayed more often than not and they travelled in together. To get him along to the sexual health clinic had been another step forward. It felt like a corner had been turned and Dom was facing up to the dangers of his behaviour. If only he’d researched it better and prepared Dom for the delay in getting the most important results. He blamed himself for handling it badly.

  Dom didn’t come back the following day, which Stefan only realised was Christmas Day when he went out to buy milk and bread and found the shops shut. But he stopped himself from trying to ring, knowing the boy would feel harried by enquiring phone calls. When Boxing Day ticked by with no sign of him, Stefan’s anxiety had grown, fuelled by the fact that a kitchen knife had gone missing. Only then did he try calling, but Dom’s mobile was either lost, switched off, out of credit, or the battery was dead. It was the following day when, still failing to make contact, Stefan had begun to look for him.

  At first, just for an hour or two a day, he toured the seedier back streets. As day followed day, the time he spent searching for the boy increased. He considered approaching the police to report Dom as a missing person, but when he envisaged trying to explain his interest in the boy’s welfare he gave up on the idea. Asking where the local rent boys cruised for business would not be wise.

  Stefan knew it was a waste of time and effort. He’d no idea where Dom liked to hang out, but fear for the boy’s safety kept him trawling the city streets all day and most of the evenings. He even missed the first week of term, going in late to the life class just to pick up the file he’d forgotten in the forlorn hope he might be able to divert his thoughts with work. That brief visit had given him plenty to think about.

  To discover that Dory was an employee at the clinic had added surprise to the huge let down he already felt about her low offer for his house. But their meeting hadn’t embarrassed him – why should it? What had really upset him, already desperately worried by Dom’s disappearing trick, had been to overhear Dory telling her sister the boy was gay. Not only was it none of their business, but also he was shocked and disappointed that Dory thought it OK to broadcast personal details of the clinic’s patients. How dare she! But the class storeroom was neither the time nor the place to tell her what he thought of her.

  Then, out of the blue, Dom had turned up on his doorstep, sniffing, grubby, and undernourished. Overwhelming relief disarmed his angry anxiety. However much he wanted to rant, Stefan knew there was nothing to gain and everything to lose if he alienated the boy. Instead, he’d put an arm round his shoulders and ushered him in.

  ‘All right?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Sorry not to …’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You’re here now.’

  ‘Could do with a shower.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but …’ Stefan pinched his nostrils. ‘Good call. Get yourself sorted and I’ll make some …’ He paused, wondering what food there was in the house. He’d been living on air for the last few weeks. ‘I expect we’ve got some bread and soup. OK?’

  ‘Uh, tomato?’ Dom asked, the adolescent huskiness of his voice even gruffer than usual, presumably from the excess of alcohol, cigarettes, and who knew what other intoxicants consumed during his Christmas bender.

  ‘Tomato if we’ve got it,’ Stefan said. ‘Oh, and this came for you.’ He picked up the white envelope from the glass table in the hall, where it had lain, unopened, for over a week. Just a look passed between them before Dom took it and mounted the stairs.

  Swathed in Stefan’s towelling dressing gown, Dominic had eventually returned to the living room at the back of the house. His hair was splayed over his shoulders in damp, dark tendrils.

  ‘Pleased to say you’ve brought a rather more acceptable fragrance in with you this time.’ The smudge of down on lip and chin was more noticeable now and he seemed taller. He was likely to make an adult height of six foot or more, but for the moment he still retained his boyish slenderness. He looked pale and lost in the generous folds of the dressing gown.

  ‘Did you take that into the shower with you?’ Stefan nodded at the white envelope still clutched in his hand. Dom attempted a laugh, but his expression was strained. It wasn’t until after their meal that he gathered the courage to tear it open.

  Dom stared blankly at the contents, as if unable to believe what he was reading. He looked up at Stefan and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing emerged.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he managed after clearing his throat. ‘Well, as far as they could tell when the blood was taken.’

  Soon afterwards, he had gone up to his room, leaving the document from the Sexual Health Department on the table – implicitly giving Stefan permission to read it. As he looked at the table of results, each box ticked negative, Stefan recalled the receptionist’s comments. The leaflet accompanying the document – which Dom had not looked at – presumably underlined this message. From what he’d said, however, it seemed that Dom did understand that all those negatives were meaningless without a second confirmation, several months after engaging in the so-called ‘risky behaviour’. Another bridge to cross in due course, Stefan thought.

  Now, a few days on since the prodigal’s return, Stefan needed to disturb his sleep. He crouched down beside the mattress, not for the first time thinking it would have been far more comfortable had the boy agreed to have his father’s old room. Dom had refused to sleep in a bed someone had died in, and had happily taken over the box room, gradually filling it with the ephemera of a teenage boy’s life. First the magazines had begun to appear, Kerrang! and White Dwarf, followed by the Warhammer miniatures, with the requisite bottles of paint and fine paintbrushes to apply it with. And then there’d been the music fanzines, followed by the LPs, CDs, and DVDs. Hundreds of the damn things, it seemed. It was a job not to tread on them. But if Dom felt the need to surround himself with all this stuff if it gave him pleasure, then why care? What remained a worry was not what he bought, but how he got the money.

  Now, he laid his hand on the sleeping mound and gently shook it. ‘Dom?’

  ‘Whaaaaa?’ The duvet stirred, then Dominic raised his head and began to cough. The dark hair was everywhere, a tangled veil obscuring his face. When the cough abated, he pushed enough hair out of his eyes to be able to see, and sniffed. His eyes were red and watery.

  ‘Seems like your cold’s worse,’ Stefan said. ‘Sorry to wake you, but I’m going in to the life class.’ He did not expect Dom to get up and come with him. ‘I should be back by half one. Before I leave I’m just going to check next door. Grace isn’t answering her phone. I’d better pop in, see if she wants anything. I’ll be going down to the shops. Anything you want?’

  ‘Have we got cola?’ Dom croaked, hoarsely.

  ‘Yes. And there’s stuff for breakfast, bread, cereal, eggs, milk. As well as baked beans, crisps … and pizzas in the freezer.’

  Dom’s head fell back heavily onto the pillow. He rubbed his eyes and sniffed again. ‘Uph! Sounds like we’re well stocked. What’s the time? I’ll get up in a minute.’

  ‘It’s only eight thirty. Look, I’ll see what they’ve got for a cold, vitamin C or something. You stay there as long as you like.’ Stefan left him, obscurely pleased that he’d used the inclusive ‘we’.

  Outside, Stefan stepped across the
fallen and rotten palings which had once been the front fence dividing the two properties. He didn’t bother with going to the front door – he’d never known Grace use it and it was probably swollen stuck. Even from outside there was the faint smell of her kitchen. His stomach clenched in preparation for the olfactory assault – any smell that was able to creep outside would be concentrated tenfold inside. There was no answer and he turned the door handle, wondering what he would do if it was locked and bolted. It opened. His stomach was already heaving.

  The atmosphere was thick, warm, and rancid. Smells of damp, and rotting food, mixed in a queasy cocktail with sour, scalded milk. Condensation streamed down inside the glass of the metal-framed windows, pooling in black lakes on the sill. The floor in the antiquated kitchen was covered in a thick layer of dirty newspapers. Every surface was crowded with boxes of opened and unopened pills, vitamins, supplements, laxatives, and indigestion tablets. Several milk bottles, varying quantities still in them, stood open. But there was a fridge. Why did the woman not use it? And why did she have to open more than one bottle of full-fat milk at a time?

  The source of the heat was the filthy stove. A gas ring flickered and sputtered under a saucepan. The milk wasn’t just scalded, it had boiled over, the milk forming a blackened cobweb down the sides of the pan. It was a miracle the flame hadn’t been doused, otherwise the dangerous smell of gas would be added to the mix. It was a further miracle that nothing had so far caught fire, as the pan was beginning to smoke.

  He went to lift it off the hob and dropped it with a clatter. Moments later, he’d turned off the gas and, using a rank and greasy cloth, removed the pan and dunked it into the Belfast sink. Already half-full, the cold, scummy water sizzled and steamed as the milk pan joined the other dirty plates and cutlery.

  ‘Grace?’ he called, shaking his stinging hand. ‘It’s only me. Grace? Are you all right? You’ve burnt your milk pan.’

  Usually, he never ventured further than the kitchen door. Hell! She wasn’t his mother. Why should he feel responsible? It wasn’t as if she didn’t have money. She was forever telling him she did, but had nothing to spend it on. He’d suggested she get cleaners in – that she could even buy herself a new carpet and an armchair – but his advice had fallen on stony ground. More recently he’d tried to add weight to her priest’s suggestion that perhaps she should think about moving into sheltered care, somewhere she could be looked after. The ground on which that suggestion had fallen was even stonier. It was almost as if he’d insulted her.

  ‘Grace?’ he called again, tapping on the closed sitting room door.

  She was getting deaf. These days, she frequently failed to hear the phone, and even failed to hear him letting himself in. She was probably in there, watching the old TV. The digi box was the newest piece of equipment she owned. He’d helped her to purchase it and have it installed.

  ‘Grace?’ He tapped again, then opened the door. The tiny sitting room was dark and musty. The television was on, but the picture was popping and pixilating, a babble of incomprehensible voices drifted in and out. At first, he thought she was asleep on her greasy, moth-eaten sofa, but her eyes were open and her hand was moving. Horny, yellowed fingernails scratched back and forth on the arm of the sofa. A rasping sound emerged from her throat.

  Chapter Twenty-six - Fran

  Woohoo! Sandy had been deputed yet again to take over the life class for the still-absent Stefan. Fran was delighted. She could relax and enjoy herself. It was just like old times, and yet … She could not pretend that her life was on any kind of an even keel at the moment. The sisters had barely spoken since their argument the previous Friday. Without prearrangement, they’d contrived to take up positions at opposite ends of the classroom. And as for the rest of her life, an uneasy ferment of excitement and anxiety simmered continuously in the pit of her stomach.

  Sandy had asked the class what they wanted to do, and after setting up a long pose she’d sat at the end of the room, either reading her book or dreamily gazing from the window. After a while, she drifted around the room, a constant smile on her round, caramel-skinned face.

  Still deeply affronted by her sister’s tirade, Fran mulled over everything that had been said. Of course she wasn’t being serious. Why on earth had Dory reacted so out of character? Where was her sense of humour? It had rankled all Fran’s life that her younger sister always assumed the moral high ground. Just because she was clever at school, had gone to university, and then become a successful businesswoman – albeit in a slightly unsavoury trade – didn’t mean she was always right.

  Dory thought she was so cool, so sophisticated, but she’d completely missed the point. It’s of no interest to me whether Dominic is gay, straight, or, for that matter, a health risk, Fran thought. Of course I don’t really have designs on him, why on earth would I? It’s all just a harmless diversion. I should pity my sister, walking emotionally detached through life. You don’t have to act on your feelings. But to deny that part of your physicality is like looking at the world through a letterbox – like appreciating Johnny Depp solely for his acting ability. You’re cutting yourself off from half, maybe more, of your senses.

  ‘That’s super, Fran,’ the teacher said. ‘You haven’t lost your touch.’

  She’d not been concentrating. How much time had passed? Looking up, she noted that Sandy’s dark hair, worn coiled on top of her head in a style that added several inches to her five foot nothing, now had a little more white streaked through it. She was wearing her trademark chandelier earrings and bangles that jingled as she moved, and the multi-layered ensemble in jewel colours, which trailed and draped around her, failed to camouflage her ever more generous curves.

  ‘It’s rubbish.’ Fran focused on the drawing in front of her, then impatiently ripped the paper off the board and screwed it up. This was something Stefan disapproved of. For the second lesson in a row they were free of his lowering presence. She could abandon her first attempt without fear of censure. So why wasn’t she enjoying herself? ‘I don’t seem to be in the mood.’

  ‘It happens,’ Sandy agreed, nodding.

  ‘And,’ Fran added in a low voice, ‘Tilly’s more fidgety than usual. According to our new teacher, Stefan Novak, we’re not allowed to start again or use a rubber. Whatever the problem, including the model not being able to keep in pose, we’re supposed to plug on until we work our way through to some acceptable resolution. I always end up with a messy scribble that I hate.’

  ‘We all have our own way of working. What suits one doesn’t suit another.’

  ‘Tell him that,’ Fran said. She began to tape another piece of cartridge onto her drawing board. ‘What’s the story? Why’s he absent again?’

  Sandy shrugged. ‘Don’t know the man. The office rang me just after nine to ask if I could take over again. I’m happy to fill in.’

  ‘Nine o’clock was leaving it a bit late. You weren’t given much warning. Not that I’m complaining.’ Fran looked over at the model. To suit the oil painters who had started their canvases the previous week, the pose today was the same as the one they’d set up last Friday. Fran, who wasn’t continuing with the same piece of work, had simply changed her position. For the umpteenth time she mapped out the sinuous line from Tilly’s head down to her hip, where she was sunk back into the chair. ‘Do you know anything about him?’

  ‘Not really. He’s not a member of ArtSkape, so not part of the art scene around here. Bit of an unknown quantity, really. I don’t even know what he does.’

  ‘He’s a sculptor, apparently,’ Fran said, pleased to find she was more knowledgeable than her old teacher. Sandy shook her head.

  ‘God, it’s enough of a struggle trying to make your mark as a painter, but sculpture’s even harder unless you’re a mate of Saatchi. What sort of thing?’

  ‘I’ve heard it’s figurative, mainly in bronze.’

  The other woman drew breath in a sympathetic whistle. ‘Good luck to him.’ As Sandy moved away, Fran’s ot
her preoccupation reinvaded her thoughts.

  ‘U bring the cream, I’ll bring the handcuffs …’ The email message she’d received last night kept popping into her head. The correspondence was both addictive and disturbing. She was in thrall to the continuing dialogue. His words had insinuated their way into her brain, evoking images of silk and lace, of a wide, canopied bed, of mirrors and incense and candles. In her fantasy, a Sade song was playing – perhaps ‘Smooth Operator’ – and she could almost feel the slither of skin on satin sheets.

  ‘Coffee break in five minutes,’ Sandy called out.

  Avoiding Dory, Fran attached herself to Liz and Mary on the way down to the canteen. They were talking about a ‘must-see’ exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, which they’d have to be quick to visit as it was closing in a few weeks. When she’d bought her coffee, she slotted herself in between Lennie and Michael. Their conversation was less likely to be about art with a capital A.

  Michael had not long returned from his boys-only trip to South America. An extension was being constructed at the manor house – an orangery, apparently, not a conservatory – while he’d been away, climbing. ‘Her indoors’ had failed to supervise things to his satisfaction. He talked amusingly about his arguments with the builders.

  ‘If in doubt, bloody builders always go for the easy option. Why don’t they ask? In the summer, you must all come over. It should be done by then. It has to be.’

  Was Michael inviting those within earshot to Combeside Manor? Fran had known him for years, he was a long-time core member of the group. His adolescent humour had enlivened many an after-class lunch session, but his friendship went no further. The friends he sometimes spoke of were either wealthy, eccentric, celebrated, or a combination of all three. He’d never played host to her or to anyone else at the class other than Rachel, who was a friend of his wife’s. A qualification soon followed the invitation.

  ‘There’s an Open Garden in June. We’re doing it in aid of the local hospice. I’ll bring in some flyers about it nearer the time.’