by Jade West
“Helen…”
“Teach me. Please. Help me express this thing. Teach me how.”
He cleared his throat. “This isn’t exactly on the national curriculum, Helen.”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Please…” My eyes pulled at his, drowning in my own frazzled emotions.
I stayed quiet until he spoke again.
“Do you keep a journal?” he asked. I shook my head. “You should. A journal is a private conversation, just the author and their unconscious. It helps make sense of things, helps transform raw emotion into something you can use.”
“I’ll get one.”
“You could share it with me. I’ll read it, and I’ll coach, if that’s what you want. I’ll help you transform raw power into artistic life. I’ll show you how.”
“Like a confidant?” My heart bloomed, and it was for the teacher as well as the man.
“Like a coach, a teacher, a fellow artist. Maybe even like a friend.” His gaze was warm, it lingered on my mouth. “I’ll never judge, I’ll just be there to coach.”
“So, I should write a journal, like a diary?”
“Write one, sing one, paint one, film one… whichever medium suits you the best.”
“Film one? Like a video blog?”
He flashed a smile at the river. “Yes, that’s an option. Only I’d be very careful of the privacy settings.”
“I have a secret diary cam account,” I said. “I never really used it, but I could.” My fingers fiddled with my skirt hem. “I could give you the link, just you. You could comment, or talk, or whatever. About the art I’m doing, I mean, the ideas I talk about… and the other… stuff… if it comes up… Coaching, like you said.”
“I’d like that.” He held out his hand, and it took me a moment to realise he wanted me to shake it. “Coaching partners. Friends.”
His palm was clammy like mine. Just enough to notice.
I did notice.
“Friends,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Well, then, friend,” he said. “I’d better take you home.”
***
“You can pull in here,” I said. “There’s an alley that runs along my backyard. Saves going all the way around.” He pulled in, engine still growling. “Thanks, for the chat… and everything.”
“My pleasure,” he said.
I pressed the handle down, ready to swing my legs out into the rainy outdoors, but a hand on my arm stopped me.
“Why bondage? Why shackles, and ropes, and cuffs?” His voice was low. “Have you done those things, Helen?”
I shook my head, smiled self-consciously. “I don’t know why. I just like it. It’s what I want, even when I try to pretend I don’t. I can’t.” Words clammed up, and I had to take a breath to free them. “I’m not innocent.”
“An artist’s soul rarely is. Your soul craves what a lot of artistic sprits seek, exploring the duality of pleasure and pain. The promise of freedom in submission and surrender and sensuality.” His gaze was heavy. “Just be careful, Helen. Boyfriends can get out of hand, situations can escalate.”
I rolled my eyes, like the most streetwise clown on the street. “I will.”
“Like I said, this kind of coach relationship isn’t exactly on the national curriculum. I think it’s best we keep it to ourselves. Agreed?”
I nodded. “Agreed.”
He leaned across me, leaning so close I could feel the heat of his body through my blouse. His fingers closed around mine on the doorhandle, and eased the catch, offering me up to the rain and the world outside.
“Goodnight, Mr Roberts,” I whispered, and my breath teased his hair.
He turned his face to mine, and his eyes were dark, glistening like an ocean full of secrets.
A flutter between my legs and I clenched my thighs tight. He felt it, too, I know he felt it. He shuddered almost imperceptibly, and his brows deepened.
“Goodnight, Helen.”
***
Mark
Oh, to be just a man.
The Jag purred as I put my foot down, taking a detour across the heart of the Herefordshire countryside. The trees were turning, nature’s own canvas; glorious ochres and russets and paprika, glowing in a sunburst against the grey of the rainclouds. I love Autumn.
I love Autumn’s memories.
And now I had a fresh one.
I could still smell her in the car.
A dithery, nervous girl called Helen Palmer. Hypnotic and mesmerising as she struggled to articulate her raging hormones.
Helen Palmer was a beautiful thing.
And I should have been cruel to be kind and told that beautiful, sweet thing No, I didn’t want her. No, it would never work. No, she was simply too young, too different, and our professional teacher pupil relationship could never change.
That’s what a good teacher would have done. A good teacher would have made his excuses and made it ok. A good teacher would have set Helen Palmer free, free to live her life and discover idiotic, fumbling boys her own age at university. Free to make mistakes in love, free to complete the rounds of mediocre sex until she found someone to make her tick the way a young woman like Helen Palmer should tick.
Someone other than me.
I’m a good teacher. Just not today.
Today I was just a man.
A man who wanted something he should never want.
I headed for home, rumbling up the lane towards Deerton Heath, easing on the brakes to take the corner onto the home straight. Mine was a cottage in the wilderness, straight out of Middle Earth, with its overgrown hedgerows and rambling vines, as though nature had swallowed the building whole, and me with it. The car churned up fresh leaves on the mud track, growling as it gained traction and propelled me up and onto the flat. I could see the whole of Much Arlock from up here, a perfect vista over the treeline to the south. I fell in love with the view every single day.
Anna had loved it, too.
I gathered up my marking from the backseat, breathing in one final taste of Helen, and then I made my way inside, backing in through the creaky oak front door and clearing a spot on the dining room table amongst the freshly-stretched canvasses.
Once upon a time I’d dreamed of being a professional artist, driven by nothing but the muse and the inner calling to express life through paint. I’d never caught my lucky break, but that was ok. The thrill of nurturing creative brilliance in those younger souls blessed with the aptitude for it was more than enough to fulfil me. It did fulfil me, and still left me time to indulge my muse.
I walked on through to my art room. Once it had been a simple conservatory, housing nothing but some old bamboo furniture. These days it was so much more. The windows gave a panorama of the countryside, huddles of trees shadowing the skyline, thinning out to open fields, and the hills in the distance. A perfect backdrop for my work.
But my private work had nothing whatsoever to do with landscapes.
My private work was just that. Private.
I flicked on the lights to better illuminate my latest work in progress. The woman’s body was beautifully positioned, arched back with her breasts pointing skyward, her dark hair trailing over her shoulders to pool around her. Her face was out of focus, just a slash of colour at her open lips, and yet she still looked like Anna.
They always did.
I’m a believer in psychic connection, not some new-age idealistic one love philosophy insomuch as an appreciation for that intangible current that runs between us all. Some of us more than others. That knowing that sizzles between two souls as they recognise their shared faces, their shared facets. Their shared darkness.
I’d never felt that with one of my students before. I’d always been careful not to.
Maybe my guard had slipped enough to let Helen Palmer’s tendrils of intuition slip through the cracks.
Or maybe it was simple coincidence that the woman on my canvas was shackled in the exact same way that
Helen Palmer’s naked body had been shackled throughout her sketchbook. Maybe it was coincidence that put the exact same expression of hazy rapture on her features.
Maybe it was coincidence that the shadowy form in the doorway was the same man on both images.
Sweet little Helen Palmer wasn’t nearly so sweet, or nearly so little as I’d liked to pretend, and here I was, at thirty-eight years old with over fifteen years of teaching experience behind me, smiling at the revelation that a jaded old artist like me could still be surprised by his students.
And excited by them.
Anna’s gentle laughter rang through my memory.
“Be careful, Mark. You’ve never seen anything like a teenage crush. Those girls will eat you alive.”
“They’re just children, tiny beacons of innocence who want popstar boyfriends and pony club.”
Oh, how she’d grinned.
“Teenage girls are anything but innocent. Teenage girls are tenacious little vixens, skilled in witchcraft and laced with fairy dust and sin.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
I picked up my palette, mixed some browns in with the darks, and added some hazel to the hair. Yes. With a bit of definition on the chin, a higher arch on the brows, and a tweak on the tip of the nose, the woman on canvas looked considerably less like Anna, and considerably more like Helen Palmer.
But no, not quite.
I reached for a sketchbook.
***
Helen
“A video diary, yeah.”
“And he’s going to watch it?”
“He said so.”
“I’ll bet he is.” Lizzie made an obscene waggle with her tongue. “I bet he’s expecting to see all kinds of stuff on your cute little video diary.”
My cheeks burned. “No. He isn’t. He doesn’t want that.”
“Bull-pissing-shit!” she squealed. “He’s a man. A man with the hots for little Miss Paint-a-lot.” She pulled open my underwear drawer before I could stop her. “You’d better make sure you’re wearing a decent set.” She swung a pair of pink frillies around her head, then launched them at my chest.
I groaned and shoved them back in the drawer where they belonged. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Whatever, Hels.”
I played it down, like it was nothing, but my insides felt like someone had twisted them with a mangle. I felt raw, and wild, crushed yet excited. Please God, let this be something. Anything. I’d take anything.
“Can I have the link, too?”
“No way!”
She pouted like a big baby. “For real? Seriously? What about hos over bros? How come Mr Roberts gets all the juicy Helen insight and little Lizzie is left out in the cold?”
“It’ll be about art,” I groaned. “You’d be bored.”
“If I got bored I’d stop watching.”
“No you wouldn’t.” I poked my tongue out. “You’d be too afraid on missing out on something juicy.”
“Yes, I would.” She poked her tongue out back. “Well, I guess this is progress. How does it feel to have spilled your obsessive little guts to Mr Hunky?”
“Weird.” I flopped next to her on my bed. “Churny. Uncomfortable. Embarrassing.” I rolled to face her. “Exciting. Dangerous. Crazy.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So are you.”
She smiled, and hugged me tight. “And that’s exactly why we’re BFFs.”
“Yes it is.” I breathed her in, the violet bouquet of her mother’s perfume, and men’s deodorant. A nicer combination than it sounds.
“And that’s exactly why you’re giving me your secret diary link.”
Lizzie went at ten. Dad dropped her off back at the Lawnside flats, and I got to beautification. Smoky eyes, plum lipstick, a vague attempt at contouring. I’d hoped to look like Lizzie, dramatic and cool and all grown up, but I looked like a budget children’s entertainer. The webcam didn’t help my appearance any, either.
I grabbed a face wipe with a groan and took the whole lot off again. He’d have to do with me. Just me.
The webcam was kinder this time. My skin looked fresh and healthy in the lamplight, my eyes twinkly. I scrunched my hair for a bit of volume, then adjusted the angle of the camera to record me cross-legged on my bed.
I was about to press Record when I noticed my archived videos. Four years’ worth.
Not a good time.
My finger clicked play, and a younger me greeted myself, eyes raw from crying.
“I have a counsellor, and she said I should do this. She thinks it will help me. Help me what? Help me be a better person? A cooler person? Less of a freak? They don’t like me and they don’t like my art, none of them. I’m weird, that’s what they say. But I am weird. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere. And nobody knows. Nobody knows how rotten I feel inside, how all this crazy shit wants to pour out of me, like I can’t contain it. I can’t contain all the feelings in my own body. I love him. They tell me I can’t, but I do. I really do.
And I’ll never have him.
He’s never going to love a freak like me...”
I pressed Stop. And then I pressed Delete.
Better days. These were much better days now.
I pressed Record.
“Hi. It’s Helen. Yes, I know that’s obvious.” I sighed to myself. “I should probably start over now, but I’m ready for bed, so just pretend I did start over.” I fiddled with my hair, then made myself still, staring straight into the camera like I knew what the hell I was doing. “So, this is my video log, my attempt at self-expression. If you’re watching this, then thank you. You were great today, and it helped. It helped more than you can know.”
I paused awhile. Trying to find words.
“The things I said were true, and I don’t think it’s transference, or whatever, but just suppose it is for a second. What difference would that make to how I feel? Would it really be any different? One person has feelings for another, then those feelings must be real, right? No matter where they came from. Feelings are real. They won’t be tamed, or bought, or discarded for some rational conclusion someone came up with once. Transference means nothing. Emotions… feelings… mean everything.”
I twisted my hair around my fingers.
“So, I’m going to give this a go. I’m going to try and harness whatever crazy energy zaps around my system and put it to good use. Who knows, maybe I could be the next Picasso, right?” I laughed to myself. “Maybe I could be.”
I stared at the camera, then I reached for the Off button. “I’m sorry again for the sketches, but I’m not sorry for how I feel about you. And I’m not sorry that you know.”
My heart was thumping and my hands were clammy, but I’d done alright.
I turned off my light and slipped into bed.
And then I masturbated over having Mr Roberts’ cigarette in my mouth.
***
Mark
Helen had a nervy little spring in her step, but she was on form in class next day. Her brushwork was impeccable, her fingers working magic on the canvas. She listened enthusiastically to a talk on Monet, and applied everything we’d discussed, as if she’d soaked my words through her skin and they’d come out through her fingers.
She was my pride in the classroom.
She was my muse outside of it.
Helen Palmer was no longer the only one with a private sketchpad.
A moment of frivolous fantasy after my canvas amendments, and I’d caught her so perfectly. The misted window with tracks of rain. Her nervous eyes as she prepared to confess all. Her delicate fingers twisting in her lap, the way the pleats in her skirt had ridden up, and blessed me with more of her creamy white thighs than I should have seen. The way her mouth parted as she listened to my words. The way she gulped and flustered. The way her eyes wanted me. The reverence in her expression.
She was beautiful on paper.
But not nearly so beautiful as in real life.
<
br /> I kept my eyes on her as I wove around the other year thirteens. She was propped in her usual spot, her heel tapping the bar of the stool she was sitting on. Her lip was pinched at the side, gripped between her teeth, her eyes narrowed in concentration.
I recalled what she’d smelled like, so close to me in the car, like cherry and jasmine, fruity and oriental. Sweet and girly yet refined.
Her hair was soft, with just the slightest bounce in it. Her blazer nipped in at the waist and accentuated the gentle slope of her body.
Uniform was never designed to look as good as it did on that girl.
Helen wore black socks, not tights or trousers like so many of the other girls. Her socks showed off her ankles, and I’d never been much of a foot fetishist, but that girl’s ankles were obscenely erotic. They disappeared into black leather shoes, just an average design, with a buckle and strap instead of laces. Nothing special.
And yet today they were special. The way she tapped her heel drove me to distraction, its rhythm tapping its way inside my brain.
She had no idea what a forbidden fruit she was.
A peach. A pale, peach, promising the most exquisite sweet nectar. A dirty, vivacious girl, in an innocent and fragile shell.
“I like Monet,” she said. Her smile was natural and warm.
“Monet would like you.”
“You think?”
“I know.” I studied her interpretation of Woman in a Garden. She’d emulated the original with class and flair, but hers had an added layer. An originality. Helen’s woman in the garden was flirtatious. Her dress billowed in the breeze, and she wanted it to.
Helen fixed me in a stare, and for once there were no nerves in it. “I saw the signs asking for volunteers in the autumn break. Building the set for the Christmas pantomime…”
“Good, I’m glad they’ve gone up.”
“I want to help again this year,” she said. “I want to help you paint the set.”
“You have studying…” I began, but it trailed off.
It knocked the wind from her enthusiasm. “Please? I’ll still study.”