Finer Things

by David Wharton

  ‘Please? It won’t take long, honestly.’

  Inside the cafe, the old woman led Tess through a door marked STAFF ONLY, down a couple of corridors and into a backyard containing a tiny brick shed only a little larger than a public telephone box.

  ‘It’s easiest to go in backwards,’ the old woman said, then turned and left her there.

  After Tess had followed this advice she swung the door shut against her own face, closing herself into the minuscule interior. She fastened the bolt and began addressing the problem of how to undress with so little room for movement.

  First in tiny steps, she rotated to face the toilet bowl. It had a seat, but no lid. Its cistern was right up against the ceiling. This would not be easy. She shucked off the duffel bag, let it fall behind her, and then shuffled around another hundred and eighty degrees so she could sit on the lavatory and remove one of her patent leather shoes. It all seemed quite clean in here, but the idea of putting her unshod foot on the floor didn’t appeal. She kept it high whilst she released her garter belt and peeled off her right stocking. Then she put the shoe back on and repeated the process with the other leg. After that it was, if not exactly easy, at least manageable. She replaced the skirt with black canvas trousers, and the patent leather shoes with a pair of red gym pumps. Finally, she swapped the blouse for a fine grey jersey, and stuffed all the clothes she had been wearing into the duffel bag.

  Back in the cafe, she took a seat at one of the small circular tables. The old woman stood at a hob behind the counter, heating an aluminium coffee pot and a pan of milk. She had been joined by a dark-haired young man, who might have been her son or her grandson. He sat half-slumped, looking vaguely at the back pages of a newspaper, from which he glanced up in Tess’s direction, caught her eye and gave her a bare-toothed grin. She looked away immediately.

  A few minutes later the old woman brought over a tall cup and saucer.

  ‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘Sixpence.’

  Tess handed over a shilling. ‘I’ve an art school interview today. Do you think I look like an artist now?’

  The old woman stepped back and appraised her customer. ‘Ech. You look like a boy. But I see them a lot here, from the art schools. Girls dressed like boys. Where’s your interview?’

  ‘Moncourt Institute.’

  ‘Oh yeah. They come in here from Moncourt. Make one cup of coffee last three hours.’

  ‘Dressed like this? Like me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  That would do, Tess thought.

  The first sip of coffee sent a shudder through her, so she tipped in several doses of sugar. Initially it seemed she’d made it more bearable, but each mouthful tasted sicklier than the last, until finally she reached a brown sludge of half-dissolved crystals at the bottom of her cup. She scooped out a gritty dollop with her finger and ate it. Then another. When it was all gone, feeling slightly nauseous, she left the cafe.

  This room must normally be a teaching studio. It was a broad, open interior with raw, paint-spattered floorboards. Abundant light from its many windows illuminated the three people behind the interview table so that they looked, even in their modern dress, like a scene from one of the Dutch masters. The Merchants of Ghent, perhaps, by Pieter Codde or some such person.

  She knew the man in the middle was the famous Benedict Garvey from all the art programmes on TV and radio, though she couldn’t see his face because he was busy muttering and tutting over someone’s portfolio. On his right sat a grandmotherly woman, and on his left a piggish man in a pinstriped suit. And the portfolio Garvey seemed to disapprove of so thoroughly, Tess realised with insuppressible horror, was her own, which she had packaged up and posted to Moncourt a fortnight ago.

  ‘Please, take a seat, Miss Green,’ the woman said. ‘We’ll be ready for you in a moment.’

  There was only one other piece of furniture in the room: a wooden chair positioned some distance from the interview table. As Tess walked to it, her gym pumps squeaked against the floorboards. The patent leather shoes, she thought, would have made the most appalling racket.

  This was a Shaker-style chair, designed for discomfort. She sat on it and became conscious immediately of the twin points of her pelvic bone digging against the wood through their mantle of flesh. Her ischial tuberosity and her gluteus maximus. Tess knew anatomy – she had drawn every important bone and muscle over and over, from every angle, flayed and cross-sectioned, in pencil, in pen, sometimes with a water-colour wash, always with the proper Latin name inscribed beneath. As a result of all this practice, she could sketch the human figure in any position she chose, fluently and energetically, even from memory. Her portfolio was filled with images that proved how well she understood the body’s mechanics, its balances, its energy and stasis. Now her very best work lay in front of Benedict Garvey, and she could see it had not impressed him at all.

  She waited, listening to him grumble under his breath. The grandmotherly woman smiled uneasily, as if she felt somehow responsible for her colleague’s rudeness.

  ‘I’m Jocelyne Weaver. I look after drawing, mainly.’

  The piggish man had just fished his pipe out of a jacket pocket. ‘Toby Flint,’ he said, then made her wait until he had got his tobacco properly lit before adding, ‘sculpture.’

  It seemed as if Tess should respond. She gave what she hoped was a confident and amiable smile. ‘Theresa Green, applicant.’

  Flint tilted his head and cupped an ear. ‘Beg your pardon?’

  She shrivelled inside. It had been the sort of remark that could pass for wit if you dropped it in with sufficient confidence, as long as nobody looked too closely at it. But it was weak. It would not survive being repeated.

  ‘Theresa Green,’ she said, louder, minus the ‘applicant’ part this time.

  Flint frowned. ‘Yes. We have your form, Miss Green. We know who you are.’

  ‘Of course.’ She caught herself about to add ‘sorry’, but held that back at least. Right at the edge of the table next to Flint was an unstable-looking tower of black portfolios. Thirty or so. All the other hopefuls still to be interviewed today. She wondered how many would pass. How many had failed already.

  At last, Garvey raised his face to meet Tess’s gaze, revealing to her the patch over his left eye. Though she had seen it several times before in book jacket photographs, and on television, the reality of it disconcerted her. Of course people really did lose eyes, and wear eyepatches. Still, in the modern world of 1962, it seemed strange, like a thing from history or fiction.

  ‘Benedict Garvey,’ he said, sliding Tess’s portfolio across to Jocelyne Weaver. ‘I’m head of the fine art department. You’re good at hands, I see.’ It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  Remembering to speak up and be heard, Tess said. ‘I enjoy drawing hands. They’re expressive, but not obviously expressive in the way a portrait is.’ Expecting a question about hands, which everyone said she did well, she had practised this remark endlessly in front of the mirror. It had never sounded as dishonest, as schooled, as it did now.

  Jocelyne Weaver held up a charcoal sketch. A young woman, seated, with fingers interlinked in her lap. ‘Is this drawn from life?’

  ‘Yes. That’s my sister.’

  ‘It’s very tender.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Tess wished there was something more she could add, some way to turn the exchange into a conversation. The woman was a kindly sort, and she seemed favourable to Tess’s work. Flint would obviously go along with whatever the others decided. But Garvey was the only one who mattered, and perhaps he was right. Perhaps Tess was a fraud after all. The great painters had immersed themselves in the gore of the charnel house; Tess had merely taken the bus to Leeds public library. No wonder Garvey thought her unworthy. All she knew about the human form had come from anatomy books; all she knew about life had come from novels.

  He looked down at her application form, and back up. She found herself wondering what was beneath the eyepatch. Images f
licked across her mind. Half-skinned faces with one eye socket full, one empty.

  ‘Miss – er – Green, your work is very good from a technical point of view. I daresay you know that already. Tricky business, drawing a hand that doesn’t look like a bunch of bananas, isn’t it? Took you a lot of practice I should think.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tess said. Again Garvey had offered her the words of a compliment, the sound of an insult. Her only hope was to work out what he wanted her to be, and convince him that was who she was.

  Flint chipped in now. His voice was as piggy as his face: nasal and stuffed. ‘Of course Walt Disney got around the problem by only ever giving his characters three fingers.’

  ‘I believe that’s right,’ Tess said, trying to guess whether or not Flint approved of Disney’s simplistic approach. He’d said he was in charge of sculpture, hadn’t he? Back at Leeds School of Art, they said you only took sculpture if you couldn’t draw or paint. Well, the drawing and painting students said that, anyway.

  Garvey continued, ‘Half the young people we take on here haven’t a quarter of your skill, I should say. But the thing is, it’s all very well being able to turn out pretty representations, and doubtless everyone in – er – sorry, where are you from again?’

  ‘Dewsbury.’

  ‘Lancashire, is that?’

  ‘Yorkshire. I’ve been doing my foundation at the Leeds School of Art.’

  Garvey scowled. She shouldn’t have corrected him, she thought. If he said Dewsbury was in Lancashire, perhaps that was where it ought to be. ‘Good enough institution, Leeds, in its way. I imagine everyone up there’s most impressed by all this verisimilitude.’ She was sure she heard him flatten the vowels of ‘up there’. Not significantly – not oop thurr – but just enough to let her know he was parodying her accent. ‘The fact is, drawing accurately’s not such an important qualification for our school as you might think. If a student has real talent, but a deficiency in that side of things, a dozen or so of Mrs Weaver’s classes normally sorts it out.’

  ‘They do come on quickly, Ben,’ Mrs Weaver said, her tone less emollient than before. ‘But hardly in a dozen classes.’ It seemed Garvey had annoyed her. Deliberately perhaps.

  ‘There you are. A couple of dozen, and then they can draw hands well enough. With all four fingers, even.’

  The pain in Tess’s backside was beginning to distract her. As subtly as she could, she shifted herself on the Shaker chair and felt the fabric of her trousers slip against the wooden surface, polished by the ischial tuberosities of all the young men and women who had sat here before her and fallen, one after another, under Benedict Garvey’s disdainful right eye.

  Mrs Weaver lifted a couple of Tess’s pen-and-wash studies. ‘These are exceptional, Ben.’

  ‘It’s a useful knack,’ Garvey continued, ignoring his colleague’s remark. ‘You’ll certainly never starve as long as you can churn out realistic-looking stuff like this. Christmas cards and such. Advertising. If that’s how you want to make your living. As you probably know, we have a very strong graphic design department here at Moncourt. Maybe you ought to consider that route.’

  ‘It’s not what I’m interested in,’ Tess said, too quickly.

  ‘What do you mean? What is it that you’re not interested in?’

  ‘Commercial art,’ she said, immediately realising how snobbish that must sound. ‘I – I don’t mean—’

  ‘Commercial art. I see. Well, one wouldn’t want to sully one’s hands with that, would one? So you prefer to make, what? Uncommercial art, I suppose?’

  ‘I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with commercial work. Only it’s motivated by money, not by—’ What was she saying? Why did she keep talking? None of her sentences could achieve a full stop. If she could only shut up, this would be over with, and she could go from this place where she was not wanted and did not belong – retrace her steps to Ginelli’s cafe; change back into who she really was.

  Toby Flint sucked on his pipe. Mrs Weaver immersed her attention in Tess’s portfolio. Both had evidently decided there was no saving her now.

  ‘Really? Motivated by art?’ Garvey said. ‘And how about Leonardo da Vinci? Michelangelo? Rubens? You think they worked for nothing, that lot? You think they fed themselves on art?’

  ‘No – of course not. I just mean—’

  ‘Painting the faces of corrupt cardinals onto portraits of the apostles. Turning rich men’s mistresses into the Virgin Mary. That’s how you made a living as an artist in the Renaissance, Miss Green. Knocking out a few Santa Clauses and robins in the snow hardly compares with that, does it, if we’re talking about prostituting your precious talent?’

  ‘Oh – I certainly wouldn’t ever compare myself with—’ She grabbed for a name that would explain what she really meant. ‘What about Van Gogh?’

  That wouldn’t save her either. Garvey’s scorn was unconstrained now. ‘Yes. Loyal to his vision, Van Gogh. But do you think he liked going hungry and unappreciated? Do you imagine he didn’t want to sell his stuff, didn’t dream of being recognised?’

  Five days in a row, the whole week Lust for Life had shown at the Dewsbury Regal, Tess had joyfully suffered through all the miseries of poor Vincent’s life, as portrayed by Kirk Douglas. Yes, Van Gogh was her idea of a proper artist. And now she hadn’t the strength to defend him against a man like Benedict Garvey.

  She said, ‘Well, obviously nobody wants to go hungry. I was only—’

  Again, Garvey cut her off. ‘Have you read Brecht, Theresa?’

  The use of her first name was unexpected. He was talking to her as if she were a child.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said tightly.

  ‘I imagine you’d know for sure if you had.’

  ‘No, then.’

  ‘Well, when you return to Dewsbury in Yorkshire, why don’t you take yourself off to the public library. Ask them to order you a copy of The Threepenny Opera? Among many fine ideas in that play, you will find the maxim, “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.” Do you know much German? It means you have to eat. “Erst kommst das Fressen” – first comes grub – “dann kommt die Moral” – then comes morality. What Brecht recognised, you see, was that to imagine you can live on ideas is romantic juvenile nonsense.’

  Around each of those last three words, Garvey left a brief, emphatic pause. Then he stopped speaking and settled back in his chair. This, Tess saw, was her cue to collect her portfolio and go, now she had been properly punished for having the temerity to apply here.

  The fury that descended on her encompassed everything in the room: Benedict Garvey; the other craven members of the panel letting him say whatever he wanted; the very idea of being interviewed when surely the work in her portfolio ought to stand for itself; the bloody pain in her arse from this bloody, bloody chair.

  ‘Which is it, Mr Garvey?’ she said. ‘Is my work competent and ordinary or am I a Romantic idealist? I mean, just so I know – for my future efforts to improve. Should I try to be less of a Romantic or less competent? Or both?’

  If things were fair, now ought to have been the moment at which Garvey understood. Tess was fierce and true. She might seem small of stature, plain of face, bespectacled and unremarkable, but she had the heart of a real artist. A heart like Van Gogh’s.

  But things were not fair, and Benedict Garvey was not fair.

  ‘Miss Green,’ he said. ‘Brecht also tells us that the true sign of intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time. I’d say any real artist needs to be able to hold as many as thirty. Thank you for coming in. We’ll be in touch with our decision.’

  That was all. Garvey was already reaching across Flint to pick up the next candidate’s work. Didn’t even have the humanity to wait until she’d gone. She had failed her interview for one of the best art schools in London. At least she could lift her aching backside from the Shaker chair.

  Mrs Weaver held out her portfolio. Of course, they weren’t
going to mail it back to Yorkshire. Tess would have to bear the indignity of carrying it home herself. She took it from Mrs Weaver’s hands. It felt different from a fortnight ago. Back then, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, ready to post off to Moncourt, it had been full of brilliance and potential. Now it returned to her containing only rubbish and disappointment. It would be difficult to carry on the Tube too, being so large and awkward.

  ‘Are you travelling to Yorkshire today, or staying in London?’ Mrs Weaver asked, through the same sympathetic, hopeless smile she had worn during the entire interview.

  ‘Oh – I’ll go back tonight, I suppose.’

  How agonising to have to sustain pleasantries, when all Mrs Weaver wanted was to be rid of Tess; and all Tess wanted was to storm out, cursing the lot of them.

  ‘Which station is it for Yorkshire? King’s Cross?’

  ‘No – that is, I don’t know. I didn’t come on the train.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Flint. ‘Did you take the coach, then? That’s a hell of a journey just to be— well, just for an interview.’

  Just to be rejected, he had been about to say. And he was right, it was humiliating. The lower-middle-classness of it all. Those hours travelling with her mother yesterday; last night in a boarding house; changing her clothes in a cafe lavatory to try and look the part. It came to her that these people didn’t deserve her honesty. She could tell them anything she wanted. They’d rejected her anyway, so what did it matter?

  ‘Actually,’ she said, lighting on an idea from a television play she had watched with her parents a week previously, ‘I hitch-hiked here. I imagine I’ll get home the same way.’

  Surprise wiped away Mrs Weaver’s vapid smile. ‘My goodness. Isn’t that rather risky?’

  Tess wilfully misunderstood the question. ‘Oh, I agree it’s not the most reliable form of transport,’ she said. ‘By the time I got to Luton, it looked like I was going to miss my appointment. But luckily a nice young man on a motorbike picked me up. He was ever so quick, nipping in and out of all the traffic jams – even went out of his way to drop me right at the door of the college. So I made it in the end.’