by Guy Burt
It is a big building, with tall windows. The expanse of floor is divided up into areas with screens, and in each area is a clutter of easels and stools and tables with brushes and jars and palettes on them. The whole place smells of paint and paper and glue and ink and a thousand other unidentifiable things. There are a few older boys working in some of the areas, and also a man arranging wooden stools in a big, open part of the room. I approach, hesitantly, and he looks up.
‘Hi. You’re a bit early,’ he says. ‘Do you want to give me a hand? I’m just putting these into rows.’
‘OK,’ I say. I am surprised how normally he speaks to me. Most of the teachers seem far more remote. He is wearing a painting smock, spattered and daubed with different colours. He is, I realize, the first teacher I have seen not wearing a suit.
‘I’m Mr Dalton. What’s your name?’ he says, as I carry stools into place.
‘Carlisle.’
‘What about your first name?’
‘Alex.’ It is the first time a teacher has asked me that.
‘Do you like Art?’
I have to think for a moment. I have never done Art before – not properly. Something comes to me of drawing pictures for Lena, and her keeping them for me, and of designing rockets with Jamie some time long, long before. I say, ‘Yes.’
‘Good. You’ll find things are a little different in here. We tend to be a bit less formal. Now. Which do you think – the boots or the bottles?’ He is pointing to a pair of old leather boots and a cluster of differently coloured bottles on a table.
‘What for?’
‘You’re going to draw them.’
‘The boots,’ I say.
‘OK. Why?’ While we are talking, he arranges them on a pedestal in front of the rows of stools.
‘I don’t know. They look more interesting, I suppose.’
‘How come?’
‘The colours,’ I say slowly. ‘All browns and greys. And the way they’re all creased up.’
He smiles. ‘Fair enough. We’ll see how you get on.’
Other boys are filing into the room by now, and taking up seats in front of the boots I’ve chosen. When the whole class is there, Mr Dalton gives out wooden boards to rest on, and paper, and thick black pencils.
‘Just see what you make of them,’ he says. ‘Try to catch the way the light from the window creates these shadows here. And here’s a tip – if you just draw the shadows, and ignore the highlights, they’ll take care of themselves. And you’ll at least end up with a picture that says something rather than one which is just grey all over. Give it a go, and we’ll see what you come up with in forty minutes or so, and then we’ll have a crack at something else.’
I have drawn castles and spaceships and copied cartoon figures from the comic books with Jamie and Anna, but I can’t remember drawing something real that is in front of me. It is a difficult idea. I realize I have to use my eyes as a kind of camera, to put what I can see in front of me onto the paper. All around me, I can hear the scratching sound of pencils working diligently, but I am still struggling to understand how to begin. I find I daren’t make a mark on the paper; it will be wrong, and I won’t know what to do next. I can see why Mr Dalton has chosen this for us: it is a kind of test to start us off, to see whether we can draw at all. And I have said I like Art. Panic builds in me as I wonder whether I will finish the session with a blank piece of paper in front of me.
A memory flickers in me of the wonder that just paint and brushes can make something so beautiful; so huge. In a strange way, the thought gives me courage.
I am staring at the paper, trying to will it to receive the image I know should be on it, when very gradually the boots on their pedestal, and the boys’ heads between me and them, and the windows and the table with the bottles and everything, all start to float up through the whiteness of the paper. I blink, shocked, and they are gone at once.
But I have the idea now. I try again, harder, and it is an effort because of the dim awareness of people breathing and shuffling and drawing and moving all around me, and because it has all become so much more difficult now. But I am able to manage something. The image trembles in and out of my vision for a while, and then I am able to hold it steady. Mr Dalton says to draw the shadows and so I start doing that, carefully shading in where the dark parts of the image are. It is disconcerting at first to see the pencil break the surface of the room and dip under it, and more disconcerting still to find that there is paper, hard against a board, just under what I see. For an instant everything wavers and threatens to fall away again. But I hold it there, forcing myself not to let it go. And gradually – very gradually – a second room starts to take shape underneath the one in front of me: a monochrome room with deep shadows and vague, uncertain highlights. The heads of the boys in the rows in front of me are dark, and then there is a slab of rainy brightness where the pedestal is, and the con- voluted surfaces of the leather, and the darkness under the table and in the long curtains off at one side. The pencils we’ve been given are soft, and the blocks of shade I make with mine are pleasantly deep.
For the first time all week I actually feel calm. Through the whirlpooling confusion that has tugged me this way and that, I have been constantly aware that everyone else seems to fit in here more than I do. I don’t even know anything about England – can’t remember anything much of the first three years of my life that I’ve been told were spent here.
I do remember dreaming of the start of a term when Jamie and I would go to England together, instead of saying goodbye to each other at the bus-stop in the square. But so much has changed since then, and the dream doesn’t feel anything like the same any more.
Jamie. I see his face now, in front of me: his eyes and mouth and features. But it’s not the face I know; it’s changed. Somehow, there is someone different there. I don’t know what it is. I wish I understood what has happened to us.
* * *
‘Alex?’
It doesn’t make sense to me for a moment, and then things shift subtly.
I am in the Art room. The stools in front of me are empty, though; the other boys are leaving. I can hear footsteps and voices as the big double doors that lead into the room swing closed.
‘Alex?’ Mr Dalton says. His hand is on my shoulder. He smiles. ‘You were pretty engrossed there,’ he says. ‘Everyone else has learnt a bit about lino cuts. I thought you looked as if you’d like to keep going on your own.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
‘Lunchtime in five minutes,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be late. Let’s have a look at what you’ve done.’
He takes my picture and props it on the table. He looks at it for a long time, looking once or twice over to where the boots still sit.
‘Not bad at all,’ he says at last. ‘Have you done much Art before?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘We didn’t do much at school.’
‘Well, that shows,’ he says slowly. ‘There’s a lot you can learn about technique. But the representation – that’s impressive.’ He pauses again. ‘What about this?’ he asks, pointing.
It takes me by surprise, almost. On the left hand side of the picture, where there is a big unbroken area of shadow cast in the angle of the wall and a curtained-off part of the window, my pencil has changed what is really there – added to it. I have made it look as if features – a nose, an eye, the corner of a mouth – are visible, coming through the shadow.
‘Don’t I recognize him?’ Mr Dalton says.
‘It’s a friend,’ I say. ‘Jamie. James Anderson, I mean.’
‘That’s it – knew I knew him. Musician, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not bad,’ he says quietly, peering closely at the picture. ‘He looks younger here, though.’ Then he straightens up. ‘Why did you add him into the picture?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I say. ‘I just wanted to put something there. I was just – daydreaming, I suppose.’
‘
Well, it’s the best work I’ve seen from a third-former in a very long time,’ he says. I blink at the praise. He adds, ‘The department’s open in the afternoons and evenings. I expect they’ve got tons of junior sports and stuff lined up for you, but if you’re free – if you’d like – come in some time. This afternoon, if you can. There’s always someone here. I’d like to see how you get on with paints, too.’ He stops, smiles again. ‘You’d better cut along if you want to get to lunch. But perhaps I’ll see you later?’
‘OK,’ I say at once. ‘Yeah.’
I leave the building with a wonderful and strange buzzing feeling inside me. I can do this; I can fit in here. If anyone asks me where I’m going this afternoon, I can say, To the Art department. I’m going to do some painting – and everyone will understand. Everyone knows what that means. Even the thing that has been lost, buried in some strange avalanche in my head, has left behind it this ability to see the drawing through the paper, and to capture it there: something I can use. It is as if, in an instant, I have made sense of myself.
‘What are your hobbies?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps lizards are your hobby.’
‘I don’t think they are.’
‘Or perhaps visiting places in your head.’
Running down the path towards the dining hall, I wish I could go back and tell that Jamie – the Jamie who was still my best friend – that I’ve at last found the answer.
I have spent two weeks’ worth of pocket money on liquorice and boiled sweets in the early afternoon. Lena says it is not long to wait until Jamie’s party, but to me – and to Jamie – it feels like an age. The sweets are supposed to wait for Saturday, but our resolve isn’t strong enough. It feels good to have no resolve, and, walking back from town with the pleasingly heavy paper bag clutched in one hand, I almost skip along the dusty tarmac.
Nearly home, a movement catches my eye. On my right, on the side of the road across from our houses, is a little patch of land in which old lemon trees are arranged in rows. It is overgrown, thick with weeds and the brown debris of past summers, too small a field to compete economically with the great expanses of lemons cultivated north of us. Someone owned it once, but now it is common property. In season, all the lemons for Lena’s delicious lemonade come from here, picked by Jamie and me in amounts dictated by Lena, our labour repaid in lemonade later in the day. A low whitewashed concrete wall divides the field from the road.
I see what has moved: away in the middle of the trees, a young cat is playing – running to and fro, pouncing at nothing, catching glimpses of its own tail which prompt it to frenzies. I am about to pass on by when I catch sight of Jamie, sitting under a tree closer to the road. He is clearly watching the cat, too, hugging his knees, not realizing I am there. I could call to him, but an inspiration comes to sneak up on him instead, to surprise him. I clamber over the little wall and, putting my feet down with care so as not to make any sound, I creep closer and closer to where he is sitting.
He has his back almost completely to me. I can see only his left shoulder and part of his head past the trunk of the lemon tree, his dark hair stirred every so often by the slight breeze that is making the leaves whisper drily. In front of us, a little way off, the cat is scratching at a stump, bending the whole of its body with the luxurious effort of it.
I am a few yards behind Jamie now – nearly ready to shout Surprise! and run at him – when something makes me stop. Something is wrong – different. I stare at the back of his head: his lightly curling hair moves enough for me to see every now and again the pale curve of his ear. He is wearing a rust-coloured T-shirt, almost the same colour as the earth round here, which I haven’t seen him wear before, and jeans. One foot is splayed out to the side a bit, and I can see his shoes are different, too; not trainers, but canvas shoes, battered-looking. I have never seen him wear canvas shoes either.
So I don’t yell. Instead I call, more quietly, ‘Jamie?’
And she turns round. She is a girl – not Jamie at all. I can see her face now, as she stares at me, and I am seeing him there as well – though she doesn’t look so much like him; maybe just the colour of her hair, and her eyes, and something in her expression. But it is him too.
Then the confusion passes, and she is just a girl with short hair. I have made a mistake, that’s all.
‘Who’re you?’ she says.
‘I’m Alex,’ I say. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Alex?’ she says, without answering. ‘Jamie’s friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jamie said about you. I’m his cousin. I’m here for the party.’
‘It’s not till Saturday,’ I say stupidly.
‘I know that,’ she says, getting up. The cat suddenly becomes aware of us, and after staring for a moment, frozen, takes off into the scrub, bounding swiftly out of sight.
‘I thought—’ I say.
She walks over. She is about Jamie’s height and build, too, though the way she speaks makes her sound a bit older to me. She says, ‘My name’s Anna.’ She looks around at the valley. ‘I got here this morning. There’s not much to do here, is there?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, not sure what to make of this.
‘Let’s go and find Jamie,’ she says. ‘He’s in his room with his books, I think. He’s got a lot of books. How old are you?’
‘Eight,’ I say.
‘I’m ten,’ she says, her voice becoming a little more distant as she says the words. ‘Come on.’
She leads the way to Jamie’s house. I follow on behind her, still hugging my bag of sweets. I have bought two of all the good ones, like I always do; but now there are three people, and they will never go round properly.
Later, it will be clear to me how different Anna is from Jamie and me. Jamie’s dreams are dreams of the imagination, fuelled by his comics and his always-questioning mind: dreams of the surface of the moon, and of what it would be like to fly, and why the sky changes colour at dusk and dawn. My dreams are dreams of my own past; I am enmeshed in afternoons with Lena and first meetings with a boy called Jamie so hopelessly that it is sometimes difficult to know what is reality and what is a slipping-away into what has gone before. But Anna inhabits the here and now, the moment, the world of impression and action and sensation. Jamie’s books and comics don’t interest her; they are fiction, not real. The world around her is enough of a story for her, and she makes it her own. Jamie looks beyond what he sees because he senses that there is more to know, more to discover and find out. It is curiosity which pulls him in. Anna looks beyond what she sees because she wants to feel more, to experience more, to flood herself with life until she can hold no more – and then turn to something new and start again. It is a need which drives her. It is not of her own will, even; it goes beyond that. She can’t help it. It is what she is. But I am eight years old, and I know nothing of this part of her.
We take Anna to the little cove that afternoon. Nobody comes here but us. The walk takes you along the cliff and around a rocky spur, and then a treacherous little path leads the way over a spit of land. On the far side of this is a way down to the shore, and then, following the coast around still further, you come abruptly on the cove itself: a neat scoop out of the line of the cliffs, protected in part by a rocky promontory which keeps the larger sea-waves out of the deep, gentle water there. The beach is shingle and large, flat rocks, extending about a third of the way round before it straggles off into huge boulders and fallen debris, and the base of the cliffs has been eaten into a little so that where the water comes right up to them they overhang the sea. The day is hot and still and the water is moving only a little, lazily, against the stones. We are breathless and sticky after the walk and the climb down.
‘What do you think?’ Jamie says.
‘It’s nice,’ Anna says, and there’s approval in her voice. ‘Does anyone else come here?’
‘No. Well, hardly ever.’
‘What do you do here?�
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‘Swim,’ he says. ‘The water’s really clear, and if you keep your eyes open you can see the fishes. And dive, too. There’s a place on the rock there that’s good to dive from.’
‘Out there?’ she says, pointing to the promontory.
‘Yeah.’
Anna stares for a second. ‘We should do it,’ she says. ‘I’m really hot.’
‘Can you dive?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Can you?’
‘Well, yes,’ I say. ‘But if you curl up in a ball you make a big splash. I like that better.’
‘You can’t, can you?’
‘Yes I can.’
‘Bet you can’t. Come on, then.’ Anna sets out along the promontory, picking her way carefully on the rock, which has sharp places like craters. Jamie and I follow until we’re out to the right place, the deep water of the cove on our right, the open Mediterranean on our left. We turn our backs to the sea and all we can see is water and cliff and sky.
Anna shrugs off her T-shirt and jeans, and after a second’s hesitation Jamie does the same. I am overcome by a sudden and surprising shyness. When Jamie and I come here on our own, we often go swimming, and aren’t embarrassed by being naked. With Anna here, though, I feel awkward; there is a vague, self-conscious unease about undressing in front of a girl. I fumble with my shirt, blushing, and then the problem is resolved for me. Anna sets her socks on top of her pile of clothes and stands there for a second in her pants; Jamie is the same. Then she turns and shouts, ‘Race you!’
Jamie is caught by surprise and hesitates; Anna has dived the moment the words are out. Her body breaks the water before he’s realized what she’s said, and then he grabs a breath and throws himself after her. I watch them, palely visible under the water, until they break back up through the surface further out. Now that I know we’re keeping our pants on, all the shyness has left me, and I’m only aware that I’m missing out on the fun. I struggle to get my trousers off and hop on one leg while pulling off my socks. When I look up again, Anna has reached one of the three big rocks that stand out of the water, and is waving one arm over her head. I can hear her shouting in triumph. Jamie is treading water a little way from her, and I can hear his breathless shouts also: ‘Not fair!’