What’s the matter?
Pardon?
You keep checking the rearview mirror.
Do I? Careful driving. You’ll take— Why are you turning around, I said it was nothing.
Because it’s not nothing. It’s something. What is it?
It’s odd.
What is?
I swear I saw a car. First back at the petrol station. And again just now.
Why is that odd.
It’s not. You’re right. It’s not odd. A coincidence.
Gilbert’s forward cranes and squinting herald spectacles in two years. Neck, a hooked concentration to phrases of oil, dashboard warnings of kidney-shaped lights, road waltzing car, ONE two three four, who leads whom. Hurtle toward our destination. Note quantities of gasoline, conditions of weather, overtaking escorts, their blinds flapped against a weak sun. Soon to be asked A penny for them for which a lie will be composed to avoid the obvious Why it is your trousers don’t hit your shoes. Nearly as bad as You Smell Nice. Which we have seen earlier won’t do at all. Hands folded on lap in a way to set Maggone agurgle with delight. Lapped, hands clasp portable art, a Gilbert original on her heavy skirt. A sober value, an unknown fiber. Flannel? Wool? Father insisted on good impressions, not jeans. Breeding. Overtheknee socks gripped by elastic matron garters which will imbed. Not good girl tights. That sag between thighs. Not knee socks. Father says they are for Catholics. At the wrists of handkerchief-held hands, her new red cardigan’s ribbed cuffs. At wristbone. Patiently awaiting a delicate wedge of tissue or art. Should the need for nose care or art appreciation ariiise. A sleeve not impolitely accordioned halfway to forearm, the result of an overheated harassment by dangerous escorts. Not like some we could mention. No. Here’s a lady, says Miss Maggone. Indeed, a marchioness, replies Madame Araigny. Although it is generally accepted in these circles that Miss Maggone would not know a lady if a lady bit her on the forehead. But a generous Marxist allows the proles their opinions. The anomaly in this case are the shoes, they must be addressed if we are doing a complete survey which it seems we are. She mentioned that Brickie once equated her shoes with Monstead’s excellence at Squashing, in the hopes that Gilbert might have some light to shed on this peculiar analogy. Ignoring her plea for illumination, he looked shoeward to comment, Those are quite a pair. Where’s the lad you robbed them from? Did you have to kill him? And, It looks like you could do some squashing of your own with those. The conversation rapidly deteriorated from there, without her once resorting to what would have been a fair, one might say provoked, comment in the comeback department along the lines of certain inadequacies in ratio: trouser cuff to socks. And was that something found only in Marxists because she has seen the misguided on streets, both in Chittock Leigh and Oxbow and if this is a way to recognize that breed she’d like to know about it. On the other hand it remains equally likely that the lopsided ratio is a gene born in British men of all types, dormant or recessive, Marxist or otherwise.
2
Car horns, pauses, unheard replies to misunderstood questions. She wakes with donkey’s ears, dreaming she is dreaming.
3
You’re awake. Were you warm enough?
Is this yours?
You wore that once before, don’t you remember? The day I ran away.
You came out from the bushes like a maligned Puck. You let me sleep then too.
Yes and I loaned you that. It was snowing. Here it is April, not much warmer.
This is how it is with best friends tearing away from school, from it all. They ask amusing questions to make each other laugh. For example. Who is the woman in his blue paintings? But this makes Gilbert stop laughing. What bolt of clarity struck her while she slept, hum? He becomes peevish, Aren’t I here with you? It took some finagling to extricate myself from France. Then, relenting or inventing, one or the other, he admits, The paintings are a composite. I signed up for a course, painted from the model. She was—a girl from town. Then he wonders, Is this harangue actually retribution for his library absence? If so, she has forgotten the second half of the forgiving principle. That could be true. Forgetting is something at which she excels. She prepares to list things forgotten, the woman who watched her sleep, a library fit for dying. This exchange.
Does my coat need a wash?
What?
You appear to be sniffing it rather suspiciously.
It smells like you.
That’s alarming. Should I be alarmed? What’s that like?
It’s like. Chemistry.
What a relief. And here, I feared I might smell like Physics or heaven forbid the dreaded English.
I told you that once, that you smelled nice. The day we painted mud. You gave me a horrible look.
Did I? Perhaps I didn’t hear you correctly. Perhaps I thought you said, You have lice. Or, You suffice. Although I quite like that. Yes. You suffice.
Are you saying that to me?
No. You more than suffice. You. Saturate.
Sugar water.
Yes, delicious.
And you. Are anomalous.
Thank you very much.
That was pretty funny about the sugar H two O. You can go up to an eighty-six for that, Mr. Gilbert.
Most generous.
4
You sure chips will do? I don’t think we’ll find anything else. Here, I vinegared these without thinking.
I like vinegar.
Sit up on the hood. Still warm.
Need more salt.
They’ve packed up and gone I’m afraid. I had trouble getting these off them. Swap with me. There’s plenty of salt on mine.
Do you want to sit up here too?
I’m fine standing thank you. Need to stretch a bit. How I love this time of day, evening. Look at that sky. How purple it is.
A Fauvist sky. Mr. Gilbert? What’s wrong?
Sometimes I regret. It’s. I don’t want you ever to be sad. I mean you know I thought you should cry but at the same time I don’t know. I. Want to help.
You do help.
Sometimes when we’re having fun, we’re joking, I worry. That we’re not serious enough. I should be more somber, perhaps.
You’re somber enough.
I appreciate that.
Why can’t we make up our own way of doing things?
Yes. Why not, indeed. It’s just us here after all. Away from the Council on Proper Behavior.
Away from everything.
Going somewhere very far.
South by southwest.
Yes. It was just a thought. I needed your advice. This is nice, this cardigan. Rare to see you out of school uniform. And your eczema’s cleared up? Here? And here?
I showed you.
Yes. You also smell nice.
Like vinegar you mean.
Much nicer.
That’s good.
You have some salt, here on your lip.
Do I.
Give me this.
But I’m not finished.
Finish eating in the car.
Okay.
Catrine?
Yes?
You are my sugar water Fauvist.
Taste more like salt.
Catrine?
Yes.
Look at me. I do
I know.
And you. How do you feel about me?
I have to tell you something.
Tell me.
It won’t change your opinion of me?
No accusation of pornography has.
This is different.
Hum?
On a different scale.
How so.
There was a man. In Maine.
Ah. I think I understand.
He had a motorcycle.
Should I be jealous?
I don’t think so. He was driving along a highway. I stood at the top of a hill with my friend Isabelle.
This sounds familiar.
There was a tire, we dug it out from the dirt. It made sense to, we did it without thinki
ng first without thinking of the consequences as if we weren’t ourselves at all but watched two other girls. We pushed that foul tire and it rolled. Rolled down the hill. When it hit him, the motorcycle, the man, he snapped up and flew. We killed him. I did.
5
And last night it was the moth. Caroming off the unworkable lantern. For show only, like the bellow pump hanging in the kitchen. Banging and fluttering til she swept it away into the corridor banging herself against a low stool in the process.
They are come, as Vicar would say, to the second of four hills. Gilbert keeping up his prompting commentary a Buck Up Not Much Longer singsong voice. Yelling back chummishly to the vicar’s German exchange student, Follow The Leader, Piers. Two Three Four. The vicar suffers asthma, if they walk too fast he’ll keel over blue. Mrs. Ingle has Gilbert by the arm, guidance for the tricky parts though she clutches him closely enough on the flataway.
They have been friends, Vicar and Mrs. Ingle, since primary school, Vicar mentioned it to Catrine on the drive when it was just the two of them in his Deux Chevaux. What a dutiful son, Mr. Gilbert was, how often he’s visited his mother in the years since Giddy arrived in Newquay. And these painting trips, well aren’t many so thoughtful nowaday, the vicar said. It took her a while to understand that the vicar contrives accents for comic effect.
Thérèse hums a jingle from television. The vicar would rather hymn, yesterday he tried but even Gilbert got stuck on the middle verse. Thérèse has a mother from France, after fifteen years still won’t speak English, even in the shops.
I had a friend once, her mother was French. But from Canada.
The French in Canada when they say yes, sound like ducks.
Piers stops against a stile to light a cigarette . . . Sorry . . . preventing them from crossing to the final field . . . I’ll die in another moment for waiting.
Whah . . . Thérèse quacks . . . You see, a duck.
Is that how they say it, really?
You speak French then? . . . Piers says it to his cigarette which has caught a raindrop from the branch overhead.
Do you really need that, son? . . . Gilbert has Ingle through one arm, doctor’s bag on his other.
Ce paysage, il te plaît?
If we are to have enough time—
We should wait for the vicar, though, correct? . . . Piers, to Gilbert.
Oh well yes of course.
So you can say—? . . . now back to Thérèse.
Je m’appelle—
Well that will come in handy in—
I know French.
Do you? . . . Piers turns to her, exhales . . . And what can you say?
Right, here’s the vicar, put that out now, hum lad.
I can say—
Come along, Evans—
Nous verrons ce que nous verrons.
Piers raises an eyebrow . . . Oh, les clichés? Oui, les chiens aboient, la caravane passe.
Ah your poor parents, misguidedly under the impression it’s English you’re here learning . . . the vicar puffing, a catch-up red . . . Sounds like French to me. Don’t let them think I had a hand in it.
Piers stubs his cigarette . . . A moment or two of French with two pretty ladies—
Children . . . Ingle, over the children’s heads. Thérèse sticks out her tongue.
—is something I think even my father would approve of. English skills be damned.
Well your English is excellent.
Bowing . . . Madame Boucher.
I won’t blush for you, Herr Piers, if that’s your game.
Game? Do I have one?
You seem to.
Herr Gilbert, do you hear this? How my character has come under attack.
Ingle turns, unhooks herself from Gilbert to face the four of them straggling through the last field, they slow to watch the smoothing of her maroon smock. Mrs. Inred a better name for her because a customer likes to buy a nice chop or two without entering an abattoir and nothing hides blood like a nice deep red, nothing I have yet to find. That smoothing a kind of reminder Why I Wear Red as if to say it could be your blood ends up here next if you don’t mind your games. Inred turns back. Gilbert has not waited.
When did he become this expedition leader, Everest, walking stick and outdoorsy deep breathing. Finally a glance. He blinks, then turns to climb up on the fence to address them. Waiting for the others, Piers again lighting a cigarette. Behind Gilbert, bored cows. Some lie, others stand. Newquay undulates beyond. Piers struggles to keep his match lit to the strains of Inred telling the vicar about breeding capons. Thérèse whines about the cold. And still he won’t look at her.
Oh to hell . . . Piers rolls the cigarette sucking to catch it lighted.
Right then, on our second day, Cows. We’ll begin by—Evans?
Sir?
You looked as though you had a question.
No.
Right. As you know, by the end of the week we’ll be painting, but first, an introduction to form. Sketch rapidly, abandon any desire for perfection. Let’s hope our friends here will provide you with some interesting poses. Off you go, I want to hear those sketch pages turning, turning. Ideally you’ll have used up your entire sketchbook by the time we make our way back this afternoon. However since I know you to be a thrifty lot, not naturally inclined to wild abandon, I’ll be happy if you have ten or twelve sketches to show me. Vicar, Mrs. Ingle, I know you both well enough to emphasize the following. It is the cows I’m interested in, the cows. We may progress to sheep when we begin painting, the wool will make for a useful lesson in monochromatics and subtlety . . . a fleeting look . . . Which some of us have studied in the past. But for today, Vicar, Lucy . . . stretching out his mouth as if they are deaf and lipread only . . . COWS. Don’t get caught up in some tree that takes your fancy in the deep background, or spend hours obsessing on three weeds at your feet. I’m looking for speed, risk, versatility. I want you to draw from intuition. Draw not from your mind, but from your hand. This is a lesson in trust, hum. Trust your hand’s eye. Imagining that your hand has sight will bypass that which so often gets in the way of art, of so many things—the brain. But I—I’m getting away from myself. Any questions? Vicar?
So as I understand it, Mr. Gilbert. We are to sketch these cows with our conté crayons or our charcoals or even a 2B or 4B—
Yes yes—
—and to do so at a rapid, intuitive pace. As if they were models.
They are your models, Vicar.
Well, not—
Any other questions? Let’s stay this side of the fence posts shall we, in case one of our friends divulges a set of horns.
Vicar unshrugs his rucksack and mumbles to Mrs. Ingle. Cigarette pressed between lips, the ever-smoking Piers bends to untie a portfolio of fine German papers.
Do you remember . . . Inred hails Vicar . . . John, that time in Truro?
You mean . . . Vicar’s fastidious pencil points . . . The time with the man who wouldn’t let go his butter knife.
Evans?
That’s the one. Not sure why I came across that, still—
Sir?
One never knows what’s brought up at any given moment . . . Vicar takes his pencil between his teeth to smudge.
You’re managing?
Well the fence. It’s at the wrong height.
Ah I see what you mean . . . Gilbert regards Thérèse who has raised herself up by standing on the paint case. The others ably balance their drawing pads as she and Gilbert did on the balcony that day in Oxbow. But the fencing hits her smack against the neck.
Sit . . . without warning, with a smell of smoke and sweat, Piers takes her under arm and around waist and hoists her up.
Hold on . . . Gilbert puts out a hand—
If any lunatic cow begins to charge, I’ll pull you off . . . Piers hands her up the dropped newsprint and pencil case . . . On my honor . . . a wink.
Thérèse eyes her.
I’m fine . . . turning to tell Gilbert . . . Up here.
I
f you fall—
I won’t . . . back to her fresh paper and charcoal because what is it she wants really. Percentages, the two of them in a dirty landscape.
Coming into his mother’s house last night, mother over a solitary cup of earl grey a pool of lamp in a clean clean kitchen, Oh Michael. For that was his name after Squeak as she was Catrine after Punchinello, after My Sugar Water Fauvist. How her stomach pitched to hear his name like that. As if she had said it herself in the dreary corridor leading to that bright kitchen. But there was his mother, like him around the eyes and in the jaw. Not in the nose, which must be regal legacy. Gilbert kissed his mother lightly on the top of her head as she stood to say, I didn’t hear the front door but then it could have been me dozing a bit, hm. And who’s this? said about Catrine in a third person way. Was she expected to answer? But Gilbert moved his hand to his mother’s shoulder, This is the American girl, Giddy. He called his mother that. Giddy.
After ten and Giddy makes hot milk and toast for them. Gilbert takes her to the third floor of the narrow house where the ceiling slopes. The bed tight with a white counterpane. Will this do for you? he places her small suitcase down by a chair as if the case contains glass. She nods yes. You have pyjamas, he seems confused, this will be the night of the moth. Yes. He sits on the bed. An intricate design carved into the headboard, acorn atop each post. Turned away, she faces the head of the bed, this is the American girl pushing a finger into the groove where the stem meets. Finally he speaks. This used to be my cousin’s bed. Not Rosie’s? No, I don’t know what happened to her bed. Perhaps it broke. Perhaps it was discarded. When she turns back, he is watching his hand run against the quilt. Won’t look up. They call this moquette, he tells his hand. Oh, she says. Then after a moment, Who does? Here’s the silence, this, the night of the moth. Downstairs Mrs. Gilbert washing out one two three cups. Catrine? Mr. Gilbert? What is it? This. What a funny word that is, moquette. Catrine? It sounds like. The night. You tell me Mr. Gilbert, what it is. Then his hand roughly in her hair and she takes it, draws his hand down against her face and presses her cheek into his palm. The night of the moth.
Schooling Page 24