by Peter Helton
‘What, so that students can see what a real painting looks like? Sod that. You mean it’s a charity do.’
It would probably work out that way but that was not how I was going to bill it. ‘Not necessarily. Rich students have rich parents.’
‘Hadn’t thought of that. Are you sure Birt wanted me there, though? He did fire me.’
‘Did he? Me too. But he was keen you should show. Your name’s at the top of the list. What did he fire you for?’
‘Fraternising with the enemy.’
‘Shagging a student? Not the done thing. Unequal power relationships.’
‘I know, I know. I only meant to console her. She’d just been dumped by her boyfriend and all that. One thing led to another. Birt went mental. Unhelpful, unwarranted, unethical. A lot of uns. Fired me on the spot. Landacker took over from me. I was gutted. Cushiest job I ever had. I even had a room at the Bothy with scary old Kroog. Crap wages but it kept me alive while I was painting.’
‘That’s how I felt at the time, though I didn’t have a room – they were all full of students then.’
‘So what did you get fired for?’
‘Not sure. We just had an argument and both refused to back down. I think we were possibly drunk. I talked to Elisabeth Kroog and she thinks I just talked my way out of the job.’
‘Lizzie Kroog, is she still there? Now that woman is scary.’
‘I think some of her social-skill components have burnt out, but everything else works. She talked me into teaching painting until they find a new tutor. It took her five minutes to do it.’
‘Yeah? Where’s the old tutor buried?’ He slurped unconvincingly at his tea. It was clear soft drinks weren’t really his thing.
‘Are you going to contribute to the show? If you say no I might have to send Lizzie round here.’
‘Who else will be showing?’
I dangled the list. He tried to take it but I whipped it away, not wanting him to see I had lied about him being top of the list. ‘Greg Landacker, Dawn Fowling, you, me and someone called Rachel Eade.’
‘Not sure I remember the last one.’
‘Don’t know her at all. The current tutors will be contributing, I expect.’
‘Yeah, I’m in. Can’t really afford to turn anything down at the moment.’
‘Not selling much?’
‘I’ve gone out of fashion a bit. The last ten years have been quite grim. I sell enough to stay alive. Or so it is rumoured. If I hadn’t been left this place by a mad aunt I’d be stuffed.’
‘Can’t you get another teaching job?’
‘Do you think BAA will have me back, now Birt has handed back his brushes?’
‘Don’t know, ask Lizzie, she’s taking over from Birtwhistle.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘There are other art schools.’
‘Are you kidding? They no longer use artists to teach artists; they use teachers. They know all about teaching and sod-all about art. Of course we knew sod-all about teaching.’
‘Possibly.’ In view of my recent re-appointment I quickly changed the subject. ‘We’re allowed one piece each but it must be accompanied by a sketchbook to show how your images develop. It’s supposed to be educational. If you can paint it at the college you’ll get brownie points and free grub.’
‘Really? There might be a problem with my model.’
‘I’m sure they’ll let you use their model. Or you might paint something without a naked girl in it.’
‘What would be the point of that?’
‘OK, I’ll let you know all the details and how I got on with the rest of the list. What’s your email address?’
‘Ah. I don’t actually have a computer as such.’
‘All right, give me your phone number.’
‘Same problem there. The phone people have become quite unreasonably strident in their demands lately and I told them what they could do with their landline. And I did get a mobile but it doesn’t have any credits. Or leccy. The chap who sold it to me forgot to give me the charger.’ He gave a little-boy shrug, looking for understanding. ‘It was only a tenner.’
‘I’ll send a pigeon.’
He walked me outside, more relaxed about me now, but as soon as he actually set foot in the outside world his mind went back to Def Con 3. We squeezed past a sea of plump carrier bags stuffed with festering refuse. Kurt took aim and kicked one hard; it soggily refused to budge. ‘The bastards won’t take the rubbish away unless it’s in sodding black bin liners.’ He opened his arms wide like an Old Testament prophet, standing by a sea of crud, inviting it to part. ‘Where do they expect me to find bin liners in the wilderness?’ I was already at the gate. He stumbled after me. ‘Hey, you haven’t got a spare can of petrol in the boot, have you? I got home on fumes.’
‘Sorry, Kurt, not a drop,’ I said truthfully and got into the car.
He remained standing just inside the lopsided gate. ‘Typical,’ he said hotly. ‘Bloody typical. It’s a conspiracy.’
FIVE
There but for the grace of God – or perhaps Annis, was what I thought when I saw Hufnagel shrink to an angry blob in my rear-view mirror. If that was his usual frame of mind then I didn’t envy his life model.
Annis was amazed. ‘How on earth did he manage to persuade her to visit him on his island in the crud?’
‘It’s a mystery,’ I concluded. ‘It doesn’t look like he has any money and he couldn’t possibly have charmed her into it.’
‘Must be blackmail then,’ she said darkly and went back to her painting.
‘Yes,’ I agreed uncharitably. ‘I wonder what he’s got on her?’
The rest of the day I wandered about the place in a daze. Teaching. Teach them what? I had been working away on my own paintings for many years now and even though the next painter was never more than twenty feet away – and frequently a lot closer – I couldn’t remember having discussed painting for ages. Painters never talk about their work. They talk about the price of paint, the rent for their studio and about sales, if any. In other words: money. I couldn’t possibly tell the students what I thought of their actual prospects out there in the real world unless I wanted to send them headlong into depression. (Bath Art Students in Mystery Suicide Pact.) The last real talk about art I could remember was when after a few weeks’ drawing in Corfu I announced that I was giving up abstract art for figurative painting. Annis had said it was like giving up composing symphonies for writing dance tunes and Simon Paris had promptly cancelled my autumn show at the gallery. Annis had since changed her mind and Simon had tentatively offered me a spring show but it meant I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence. While I moped around the mill pond, getting a damp bottom from sitting in the meadow and cobwebs in my hair from rummaging in the outbuildings, I gave it some thought and by the evening I had come up with a reasonable teaching strategy.
I was going to wing it.
By the next morning my enthusiasm for teaching art was at a very low ebb, if it had ever flowed at all. Elisabeth Kroog had made it sound like the easiest thing in the world, but then she had been doing little else since the beginning of time. Write your own timetable, she’d said. Start when you’ve got over the shock of having a job to go to. I piled an obscene amount of sticky rose petal conserve on top of a hunk of croissant. Teaching. What had I been thinking? I managed to manoeuvre the whole piece into my mouth without getting half of it all over me and the taste took me back to what now looked like the carefree days of a legendary spring in the hills of Corfu. I definitely hadn’t got over the shock yet, so I’d be starting tomorrow at the earliest. Perhaps the day after, to be on the safe side.
I looked down at the list of exhibitors. I had ticked off myself and Hufnagel, which left the (allegedly) arrogant Landacker, a painter called Dawn Fowling and a sculptor called Rachel Eade. I wasn’t in the mood for Landacker this early in the morning, and I never quite know what to say to sculptors (apart from ‘Would you mind doing that outside, pleas
e?’) so if I wanted to keep up the illusion that I was doing something useful it would have to be Fowling. Problem was there was no address, unless ‘Bath’ followed by a question mark now qualified. I sent Tim a text: could he find me an address for Dawn Fowling, probably in Bath? I had just managed to dispatch my second croissant when he called me back. Sticky-fingered I answered my mobile.
‘You’re up early,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the world of work.’ Tim sounded disgustingly awake.
‘Haven’t started yet. Did you find her?’
‘Yes, what’s she done to deserve your attentions?’
‘Taught at the art school once. On my list of exhibitors.’
‘Ah yes, Annis told me. You’re suddenly quite busy. Teaching, painting, exhibiting.’
‘I’m glad there’s no PI business at the moment.’
‘There’s none because you never answer your phone or check your messages. If it goes on like that people will cease to believe you’re real.’
‘I’m waiting for something interesting to come along. Can I have that address, do you think?’
‘Sure. It’s just around the corner from me. Dawn Fowling. Sounds like something you do early in the morning with a gun …’
‘A fowling piece.’
The address turned out to belong to a block of council flats hidden between Julian Road and Lansdown. Fowling’s name was sun-bleached into doubtfulness but I could just make it out as one of twelve on the battery of bell buttons. I rang, waited, rang again.
‘Hello?’ An incredulous voice from above. I abandoned the intercom and stepped back to look up. A tousle of blonde hair at a tiny third-floor window. I heard a very tired ‘Yes?’
‘Hi. I’m Chris Honeysett. Are you Dawn?’ An underpowered moped with two kids on it prattled past. I wondered if I had been heard because the woman looked up and down the street before answering.
‘Yeah, what of it?’
‘It’s about a show at Batcombe House. You know, the art school. You used to teach there.’
‘I know.’ She continued to stare down, perhaps thinking, perhaps going back to sleep. ‘Erm, look, I’ll come down.’
Good, because shouting up to the third floor was giving me a pain in the neck. I could not remember having met her but thought I remembered her work. If I was right, then Fowling was the creator of romantic abstractions that were based on cloud patterns in the skies above the British Isles. It allowed her to range through an enormous spectrum of colour, from slate grey to rosy pinks, or Payne’s Grey to Geranium Lake if you care for that kind of language.
It seemed to take her forever to get downstairs, long enough for me to smoke half a cigarette, cough for a while, then finish the other half. Almost without noticing I had started smoking again, ever since I had accepted the offer of a cigarette by the side of Birtwhistle’s crashed car.
When she tumbled out of the front door Dawn was apologetic. ‘Sorry,’ she croaked. ‘Wasn’t dressed yet.’
‘Couldn’t find a brush,’ she might have added. She was either suffering from serious bed-head or female hair fashion had taken an unexpected turn. I suspected a monumental hangover was in progress. The clothes she had been able to find however were an agreeable jumble of paint-spattered jeans, washed-out checked shirt, tatty biker’s jacket and purple Doc Martens. She gave me a not-too-unfriendly sideways look from tired blue eyes as she stomped past me down the road.
I fell into step. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Mangia Bene.’
My Italian had always been a bit shaky. ‘Eat well?’
‘Is that what it means? Deli around the corner. You speak Italian then?’
‘Nah, don’t have the time.’
I took a breath to start explaining why I was here but she stopped me with a spooky little gesture of her hand. ‘Please. I’m no good before coffee.’
I thought she and Annis might get on well if they ever found themselves awake at the same time. We remained silent until two cappuccinos had been delivered to our little pavement table outside the deli in St James’s Street. She took a sip, furtled a cigarette from my pack and lit it with a Zippo produced from her jacket. She exhaled smoke through her nose. ‘OK, shoot.’
‘Ex-tutors exhibiting their current work at the Bath Arts Academy. Thirtieth anniversary, apparently.’
‘Are you an ex-tutor?’
‘Ex and current again, though just until a new painting tutor can be found.’
This had a more invigorating effect on Dawn than the cappuccino; I now had her attention.
‘When were you there?’ I asked.
‘Gosh. I left twelve years ago. I wasn’t there for very long either. I was … seduced away. I wish I was still there; in retrospect it seems idyllic now, compared to what goes on at the big colleges.’
I thought I already knew where this story was heading. ‘Is that where you went?’
She growled and nodded. ‘The money was better and the other so-called benefits looked good.’
I nodded sagely. I kept quiet in the pause that was developing. I could hear the bitterness in her voice and thought Dawn could probably do with telling it just one more time.
‘Within a year they fired us all and made us re-apply for our own jobs on completely insane terms. Short-term contracts, no holiday pay, term-time only and a huge cut in salary. The students didn’t care, didn’t even blink, the selfish little gits. I stuck it for two terms then got “replaced”.’
‘Did you ever try and go back to BAA?’
‘I did talk to John. There wasn’t an opening at the time. And he did say about having been disloyal and all that, and he was right. I was stupid. I made lots of stupid decisions round that time.’
‘I have a portfolio of those,’ I assured her.
‘Your own or other people’s? So, anyway, I wouldn’t have thought Birtwhistle would be keen to have me there.’
‘On the contrary, your name’s at the top of the list.’
‘Really? That’s very decent of him, considering. And he sent you?’
‘In a manner of speaking. I forgot to mention – John died. Last week, in a car crash.’
‘I didn’t know. Shame. He was a decent guy. Not quite of this world, even when he was alive.’
I wasn’t quite so sure about John’s otherworldliness. When he was alive, that was. ‘I think he just didn’t care for the way things were going, the direction art education was taking, and he created his own world around him. And even within that world he was happiest hiding in his print room with his smelly inks. But he did make time for his students. So perhaps he was a bit disappointed that you followed the money.’
Dawn nodded. ‘I’m surprised he wanted me to exhibit there.’
‘I was surprised to find myself on the list too, but he probably didn’t choose us because he thought we were particularly nice people or good teachers, even. He chose us because of the kind of work we do. He was thinking of the students again, exposing them to the kind of art he thought they ought to look at. Not at people turning lights on and off in empty rooms or other lazy nonsense.’ It appeared I had pressed a button there because Dawn reeled off a string of names, all prefixed with the same derogatory adjectives, of people who were currently making easy money from a gullible art world entranced by the emperor’s new clothes. I was almost sorry I mentioned it. With difficulty I managed to change the subject. ‘Is your studio near here?’
‘You want to see it?’ She stood up, ready to go. ‘When did you last sell a painting?’ she asked.
‘In spring,’ I admitted rashly.
‘You win. You get to pay for the coffees.’
We didn’t have far to go. Her studio was in fact a converted double garage in a nearby mews. The doors had been bricked up and faced with Bath stone so that it became nearly invisible.
‘The entrance is through here.’ She led me through a tiny gate by the side of a row of garages with painted wooden doors. Dawn’s studio was the last one. A door had been set into th
e back wall which faced on to a tiny courtyard, separated from substantial town house gardens by a ten-foot wall. As she opened the door I could see that a long skylight had been fitted into the roof along one side. ‘There’s no toilet but that’s never been a problem; there’s a pub round the corner.’ Apart from a paint-encrusted hostess trolley that held her palette, brushes and oils, and a small shelf unit crammed with paint tubes, every bit of space was taken up by paintings. Dawn Fowling had either been extremely busy or hadn’t sold much for a while. I suspected a bit of both. There was no easel; she fixed her canvases to the wall via a wooden framework screwed into the brickwork. When I closed the door behind us the light seemed just right.
‘A perfect little studio. Good lighting. I could work well in here. Does it have heating?’
‘Don’t get excited. I’ve been given two months’ notice. They’re turning it back into a garage.’
‘What? Why?’
‘So some sad git can keep the rain off his Porsche.’
‘They must be mad.’
‘Where have you been? They’re going to get rid of the skylight and put the doors back in and turn it into a lucrative black hole. The rent is going up by five hundred per cent. They already advertised and got over a hundred replies.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘No idea,’ she said bleakly. ‘I looked but there’s hardly anything and what there is I can’t afford.’
Not for the first time I counted my blessings. Dawn agreed to produce a painting and sketchbook for the anniversary exhibition. I in turn promised to get in touch with the details and to keep an ear open for any affordable studio spaces.
I had returned to the car fully intending to drive home, perhaps pick up some food on the way and, at most, do a bit of drawing, but a vague yet strangely familiar feeling had started nagging at me. After a while I did recognize it from my school days. It was the ‘uncompleted homework’ feeling. I started the engine and drove out to Batcombe.