The Blue Cat

by Roland Graeme

  “I see.” To my relief, he didn’t proceed to ask me any of the standard questions, such as have you ever been to Buckingham Palace, do you have a coat of arms or am I supposed to address you in any special way, like “sir” or “your lordship” or “your high muckety-muckness?” If he had, the answers would have been, respectively. Yes, several times and Yes, but I’ve never felt the need to stick it on everything I own and Dear God, no. Just call me by my first name, will you?

  The kettle boiled and I poured the steaming water into my reliable old Brown Betty teapot.

  “Can I carry that tray for you?” Geoff asked.

  “Certainly not. You’re my guest. Well…you might hold that door open for me, please. I thought we’d work in my sitting room, instead of in my studio,” I added, as I led the way down the hall. “Since I just want to do some pencil sketches.”

  One of the amenities of this town house was that it had a walled garden in the back—neglected and overgrown, to be sure, because I’m no gardener, but there was a small glass-paned conservatory, attached to the rear wall of the house. I’d turned this into my studio, taking advantage of the natural light that came through the windows. I did my real painting there. Casual work, such as the sketching I wanted to do today, I could do in virtually any room of the house.

  In my sitting room, I’d lit the fire and set out my sketchbook and pencils. Over the chintz slipcover of the sofa I’d thrown a bedspread from India, heavy cotton with a mandala pattern block printed on it, in tawny oranges, dull reds and browns, against an indigo blue background.

  “I thought you might sit—and pose—right there on the couch,” I suggested.

  “Perfect.”

  “Is it warm enough for you in here?”

  “It’s perfect,” he repeated.

  We relaxed over our tea. Geoff seemed quite at his ease. He helped himself to the sandwiches and scones on the tray.

  We chatted. I didn’t want to ask him too many personal questions, but his military career was a safe topic, and so was his modelling. I learned that he was in the British Royal Marines Commandos. He had recently successfully completed the Junior Command Course, which had earned him the promotion from Lance Corporal to Corporal. As such, he led an eight-man Close Combat Rifle Section. All this impressed me, but he downplayed it. He and the other men spent all of their time training and drilling. They were ready for action, at a moment’s notice, but in fact, they rarely saw any.

  “I do like staying fit,” Geoff remarked—a considerable understatement.

  He told me that he posed in the nude for professional photographers occasionally, but he preferred working for artists who worked in the more old-fashioned mediums. As he put it, he remained reasonably well groomed for a life drawing or a painting session, but photographers wanted every hair to be in place, and some of them insisted that the model shave off his body hair. They also fussed about the lighting, and because the lighting was so strong, they wanted the model to wear makeup to prevent the washing out of his features. Geoff hated having his face made up.

  “Camouflage is bad enough, when we have to smear it on our faces for exercises in the field,” he joked.

  We finally got down to work. He stood up, set down his empty teacup and kicked off his rubber sandals. He shed his robe, as unselfconsciously as though he were alone in his own bedroom. He stood there for a moment, gloriously naked and I must admit that I sucked in my breath at the sight of him.

  “How would you like me to pose?” he asked.

  “I don’t want you to pose at all, if you know what I mean,” I told Geoff. “Not yet, anyway. Just sit there comfortably as though you were relaxing alone at home.”

  He resumed his seat, placing his butt on the centre of the mandala, then adjusted his position slightly, leaning back against the sofa cushions and parting his legs. “Like this, maybe?”

  “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”

  He proved to be an excellent model. Now someone, in response to that statement, is likely to protest that there’s nothing much to modelling, provided one possesses a certain basic self-confidence and perhaps a hint of an exhibitionist in one’s personality. You take off your clothes, you strike a pose and you don’t move. Easy, right?

  Wrong. In fact, it’s possible for a man to be extraordinarily good-looking, have a fine physique and be so wooden that an artist might as well have a department store manikin in front of him to draw from. Geoff was a perfect example of the rare opposite, a model who seemed totally involved in the moment and who was always giving me something, even when he seemed to be in repose. An energy radiated from him. There was a face and a body there, indubitably, and they were absorbing to study and to draw as objects, but one was aware of the presence of a personality, as well.

  I made a number of quick sketches, then after asking Geoff to adjust his pose a bit, I started to work on a more detailed and finished drawing. It wasn’t bad, but I experienced some frustration because what I was reproducing on paper hardly did justice to my model. He really did have a beautiful body. I almost envied Sergei, who had the advantage of working in three dimensions.

  We took a break. Geoff slipped on his robe and we had more tea.

  “May I have a look?” he asked, indicating my sketchpad.

  “Of course. They’re only practice sketches,” I said, dismissively. “I need to work on my anatomy.”

  He examined the drawings. “My nose doesn’t look like that!” he protested.

  “To me it does. Anyway, it’s a good nose, with a distinctive shape.”

  Geoff peered at himself in a mirror on the wall. “I still don’t see it.”

  “That’s because you can’t see yourself from the same perspective that other people do. Even a photograph can be deceptive, in that respect.”

  He consulted the sketches again. “At least you’ve got my willy right.” He spoke with a matter-of-factness, devoid of any suggestiveness, that I found rather startling. I’d gotten so absorbed in my drawing that I’d actually stopped thinking about sex, which was a novelty for me. Geoff was so masculine that, if anything, I’d assumed he must be straight.

  “Penises are actually every bit as individual as noses, ears or lips,” I said.

  He smiled. “No two exactly alike, eh?”

  “Not in my experience, so far.” I risked making this innuendo and he picked up on it right away.

  “Has your experience been extensive?”

  “Just average, I suspect.”

  “Are you speaking as an artist—or as a man who likes to have a good time?”

  “Both.”

  Geoff seemed to ponder this for a moment before he asked, “And do you ever manage to combine the two?” Now he definitely sounded a bit flirtatious.

  “Not often. I may be only an amateur, but I do try to take my work seriously.”

  “I can’t say the same about some of your colleagues. Including some of the professionals.”

  “Are you offended when men hire you to pose for them, then they hit on you?” Note that I said when, not if. There was no doubt in my mind that any man as attractive as Geoff had to fend off more than his share of advances.

  The question didn't surprise him. “Not really. It does annoy me when somebody takes it for granted that just because I’m willing to take off my clothes for money, I’ll do other things for money or for free.”

  I interpreted this as his way of discouraging me from making that mistake. Therefore, instead of trying to impress him with my wit by making any more sexually suggestive remarks, I steered our conversation back to neutral topics.

  Soon we went back to work, although this time I asked him to pose standing up, enabling me to see his full body.

  I was concentrating so much that our conversation flagged and I lost track of time as it passed in silence. When I did glance at the mantel clock, I realized that Geoff had been posing, patiently, for long past the point at which I should have let him
take a break.

  I apologized.

  “Don’t worry about it. I don’t tire easily and it’s worth it, if the session’s a productive one. Are you satisfied with what you’ve done, so far?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Which has nothing to with you, but I can’t seem to get you quite right. I do need to work on my technique. It’s like anything else—if you don’t exercise it, it goes slack on you.”

  I got us more tea. Wrapped in his bathrobe, Geoff drank his standing up as he wandered about my sitting room barefoot. He admired the pictures on the walls.

  “Are these yours?” he asked.

  “No, they’re my uncle’s, most of them. I don’t have a big enough ego to display my own work here at home.”

  “It’s funny,” Geoff said. “I’ve seen so many of you artists hard at work. You’d think a tiny bit of it would’ve rubbed off on me by now. But I can’t draw a straight line.”

  “Me, either,” I joked. “Mine always have a hint of that telltale curve to them. In other words, they’re bent—like me.”

  There. I’d made it clear I was gay, just in case my previous hints had been too opaque.

  He laughed. “I like the way you don’t take yourself too damned seriously.”

  “I try to take my work seriously,” I protested. “Myself? Not so much. I’m too aware of my own deficiencies.”

  “Oh? And what might those be?”

  “That’s an unfair question.”

  “I’ll withdraw it, then.”

  “No need to. Let me think for a moment. What are some of the things I don’t like about myself? Well, I tend to be selfish or self-centred, which amounts to the same thing. I take certain things for granted, because I’ve never had to do without them. I don’t get along very well with most of my relatives. And I have an extremely strong sex drive.”

  “You lost me with that last one. What’s wrong with an extremely strong sex drive?”

  “Nothing, while you’re actually having sex. The rest of the time it’s a distraction.”

  “You’ve got a point there, I suppose. Sometimes I get all worked up and I start thinking I should go out and try to, you know, meet somebody. However, I can’t make up my mind where to go. So I end up telling myself, oh hell, I might as well just stay home and have a quick wank and get it over with.”

  He too seemed to be making a confession—if not that he was gay, in so many words, at least that he was unattached and enjoyed recreational sex.

  It was odd. With any other man, I might’ve responded to that conversational gambit by saying, I know exactly what you mean. Now that you mention it, might you be in the mood for a quick wank right now? We can go upstairs to my bedroom. For whatever reason, I felt strangely passive in Geoff’s company. I was reluctant to make any sexually aggressive move. Let me assure you that was unusual for me!

  Instead, I merely let out a silly little laugh and I said, lamely, “Yes, I often like to spend a quiet evening at home all by myself, too.”

  All too soon, our time was up. Geoff went upstairs to get dressed. I’d pre-paid his fee to the modelling agency, which took its cut, but I knew that tipping was permissible and appreciated. As—reluctantly—I let him out my front door, I slipped him a folded banknote.

  “Oh, that isn’t necessary,” he said. “After all, you gave me my tea.”

  “Please take it. For cab fare—or whatever.”

  “Thank you…thank you very much.”

  He shook my hand, quite formally, but he smiled at me in a way that belied the formality.

  * * * *

  Geoff and I got along famously from then on. I booked him for two subsequent sessions. Now, we worked in my studio, the converted conservatory overlooking the garden. I made larger, detailed drawings of him and did quick, spontaneous all prima sketches of him in oils.

  It was as though we were old friends. We immediately settled into a routine—tea and conversation, followed by intense work, with more talk during our breaks. It was in the course of one of these chin wags that I finally felt bold enough to ask Geoff a question I’d been formulating ever since we met.

  “Would you mind if I asked you one terribly personal question?”

  “No, go right ahead.”

  “Are you seeing anybody?”

  “No one seriously, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I do. Would you like to be serious about somebody?”

  He smiled. “That’s two questions,” he pointed out, “but the answer is yes, I’m sure that would be very nice. But it’s not the sort of thing you can make happen by wishing it.”

  “That’s true.”

  “My turn. What about you? I don’t see much evidence around here of anybody sharing your life. No matter what may go on up there in your bedroom at night,” he added, slyly.

  I had to laugh. “You’ve guessed right.”

  “I should think you’re what’s called a highly eligible bachelor. I can’t understand why you haven’t got a steady lover.”

  “Maybe I’m no good in bed,” I suggested, “and that’s why none of them ever come back after the first time.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Can you tell whether a man is good in bed or not, just by looking at him?”

  “Yes, most of the time.”

  We discussed this intriguing theory at greater length. By now, Geoff and I didn’t censor our speech around one another and our conversations could be blunt and bawdy. He believed you could identify a bloke who was really sharp at his game, as he put it, by his body language—the way he carried himself and by a certain indefinable yet unmistakable look in his eye.

  “If you can get that look down on canvas,” he challenged me, “then you’ll be a real painter.”

  “As opposed to just another no-talent scrubber—is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yeah.”

  I liked it when he teased me. It made me feel like a schoolboy with a crush on an older boy, who’d deigned to take some notice of him.

  “Let’s see you give it a go, if you think it’s so easy,” I suggested.

  “Shall I?”

  “Why not?”

  Impulsively, I rummaged about among my supplies, selected a small pre-stretched and pre-primed canvas a foot square and set it on my spare easel.

  “You’ve seen me and other painters at work, Geoff. Now you take a whack at it. I’m not going to coach you at all. You’re entirely on your own.”

  I handed him my palette and—I have to admit—one of my more utilitarian flat bristle brushes. I wasn’t about to risk having him damage one of my good ones.

  He accepted my challenge at once. “What shall I paint?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  He thinned some yellow ochre with turpentine and began to cover the upper half of the canvas with a first layer of background colour. I could see that he had picked up, through observation, the basic concept of painting with oils, which is fat over lean.

  Using another, darker colour, he drew a line across the canvas and began to fill in its lower half. When, with a third colour, he applied some bold brushstrokes to create a vaguely ovoid shape in the centre of the picture, I realized that he was attempting a still life. The subject was a vase set on a tabletop, visible from where Geoff stood.

  No, he reminded me, in response to my question—he had never painted before, at least not with real paints, as opposed to the cheap pigments schoolchildren use. “This is the first time in my life I have ever held a palette,” he announced. He continued mixing colours and dabbing while we talked and I could see from the way he stood close up to the easel, painting with his nose as we say, and from the way he held the brush like a child holding a pen, close up to the nib, that what he said was true. My fingers itched to correct his grip to something permitting a looser wrist action—but I had promised, or rather threatened, that I wouldn’t interfere, but would allow this interesting experiment to run its cour
se.

  “This is fun. But don’t you want to get on with our session?” Geoff asked.

  “Yes, I will. But you stay right there, as you are and go on painting. You make a good subject standing there at the easel.”

  It was warm in the studio that afternoon and he hadn’t bothered to put on his robe back on when we’d taken our break. He stood there nude, except for the palette on his thumb. The flowing contours of his limbs were in nice opposition to the rigid lines of the easel. We continued to work while the light lasted, he with colours, I in black chalk on white paper.

  “There,” he declared at last, stepping back to examine his work.

  I put down my sketchpad and came over to take a closer look. Geoff—to my mingled delight and chagrin—had produced a perfectly respectable little alla prima painting. The perspective was askew, but in a way that a Cubist would not have objected to, and he had even attempted some sophisticated colour shadings.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said. “It’s not too shabby. I may have some competition.”

  “Oh, you’re just saying that,” he scoffed. “But it’s really fascinating, the way the paints change colour when you blend them together with the brush. They start out one way, then transform into something completely different.”

  “You’ve just defined the whole business of painting, in one sentence. Did you enjoy yourself?” I asked, as he put down the palette and the brush.

  “It was the most interesting posing session I’ve ever had,” he said. “Maybe because I got so caught up in what I was doing that I forgot I was supposed to be posing.”

  “And it’s given me an idea for a big painting. I’m going to paint you posed just like that, but in the style of one of those great old nineteenth-century Academic nudes. You had such a look of concentration on your face. I can call it Portrait of the Artist as a Naked Man. I’ll think about it, mull over the possibilities in my head and we’ll start right off on that project, next time.”

  “It sounds interesting.”

  Geoff went upstairs to get dressed, while I put away my sketching things and cleaned the brush he had used.