Literary Remains

by R. B. Russell

  The studio was busy that afternoon and evening with all the students vying for space and helping each other to fix their canvases over the stretchers. They were all sizing their pictures before they left, intending to come back the next day to prime them.

  Archer had appeared later in the afternoon and he made his way over to Justin and asked him what he thought of the assignment.

  ‘To be honest,’ he admitted, ‘I’m a little worried about the size of the canvas.’

  Archer smiled conspiratorially:

  ‘Why not add some marble dust to give it texture? Put it on with a damp cloth when the size has properly dried. There’s some just inside my studio door, if you want to help yourself.’

  ‘That’s great; thank you,’ but Justin did not feel any more confident.

  ‘Try using larger brushes to block in your picture,’ the tutor suggested. ‘And perhaps add some body to the paint, beef it up so it will go further; I use wax, you could try that; then, later, for the finer work, you can work into it with smaller brushes, as you’re more comfortable with those, and revert to purer paint and glazes.’

  There were other students for Justin to talk to, but they slowly faded away, in ones and two, until only he was left in the studio. He was hoping to be able to apply the primer that evening, but knew that he had to let the size dry properly first. He hung about the studio listlessly, trying to read a novel someone had left on their desk, and thinking about Locke and his model.

  At about ten that evening it was dark. He judged it to be the time right to paint on the primer. When he had finished, his brush was washed and his space tidied up, and with nobody around, he decided to take out his charcoal drawing from where it had been in the plan chest. All day as he had worked with others around him he had been aware that it was there. A part of him had hoped that somebody might have discovered it; he wanted it to be admired, knowing that it was rather well-executed. But even if his work was not properly appreciated, he decided, any critic would have been taken with the beauty of his model. The picture, however, had remained undiscovered, and he knew that for the moment it was best that way. How could he explain to anyone what had happened in the studio late at night? And even if he was believed, and not thought badly of, that very evening there would be at least a dozen other students waiting there with him to see if the tutor and model would return.

  He put the drawing on the easel and stood back from it. As he did so he bumped into someone standing behind him.

  ‘Adequate, lad,’ said Locke.

  Justin turned in horror and then backed away.

  ‘Barely adequate. Where’s the passion?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can explain…’

  ‘No you can’t.’

  Locke strode across to Justin, whose easel barred any escape he might have wished to make. Locke grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and started to drag him away, over towards his studio. Justin now saw that the woman was there too, waiting by the door. Locke let go of Justin and waved her inside. Then he pushed Justin in after her.

  ‘This is passion,’ pronounced Locke, going to his own easel and taking off the sheet that covered it. There was a full length drawing of his model, sitting in the chair just as she had when Justin had drawn her himself. From Locke’s position, though, she was in profile; she was looking through the glass; she was looking to where Justin had been sitting drawing her.

  ‘Look at this, and learn what passion is!’

  From a portfolio he produced a large piece of tan card with the model standing depicted in gouache. She was facing the artist this time, and it was well done, certainly. It was executed with simple, bold lines and large blocks of confident shading.

  ‘Can you see how much better this is than your own feeble effort?’

  Justin was unable to think straight. His thoughts were in conflict. Should he admit the superiority of his tutor’s work and hope to get out of the situation by grovelling? Or should he say that he thought his own work to be as good as Locke’s, as he really believed?

  ‘They’re…they’re…’

  ‘They’re what? Spit it out.’

  ‘They’re, well, different.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t compare them. They’re different.’

  Justin was prepared to accept verbal abuse, to be humiliated by the man’s words. He had been surprised when Locke had manhandled him into his studio, but he did not expect physical violence. Locke took a step forward and punched him firmly on the nose.

  Justin did not have time to pull away, because he had not known what was about to happen. He did not know whether he cried out or merely kept silent, but the blinding pain exploding in the centre of his face made him unaware of what happened in the following few seconds. He simply found himself sitting on the floor with his nose hurting like hell and blood gushing from it down his face and over his shirt. He opened his mouth, not necessarily to speak, but blood rushed into it and so he shut it again. He felt unutterably foolish and then he noticed that the man and woman were fighting. She was calling him a brute, a beast, and slapping him hard about the face. Justin felt he should get up and intervene, for compared to Locke she looked small, thin and fragile, but the tutor was not reacting to her assault. She punched him ineffectually in the chest and he moved back, and then she stopped. He laughed at her.

  In reply, and with a look of determination, she punched him hard between the legs.

  This made him double up and shout, breathlessly, ‘Bitch!’

  Locke stayed in that position for some moments, then, very stiffly and painfully, he stood upright again. With a pained calmness he reached for something on a cupboard that was just out of Justin’s line of vision. Then he strode forward and determinedly pushed his hand out towards the woman’s throat.

  From where he was still sitting on the floor Justin had not seen quite what had happened. She had disappeared from his view behind the desk and was making strange noises that frightened him. He was compelled to get up, his hand still trying to stop the blood from running out of his nose, although whenever he touched it his nose hurt abominably. There were still those strange sobbing sounds he couldn’t identify, sounds magnified by the silence of everything else in the whole vast building. He groped his way shakily around the other side of the desk from his unmoving tutor, distracted by the pain he was in.

  She was lying there, on the floor, her head at his feet. He became faint and saw her as though she were upside down. It took a moment before he understood what had happened; her hands were at her throat, but unable to grasp the hilt of the paperknife that had been driven into it. The knife had made a wound through which she was now desperately trying to breathe. The woman’s eyes looked up into his and then suddenly she gasped in a huge, horrible attempt to get oxygen into her lungs. Her body went into spasm once, and then she was still.

  Justin looked over at his tutor, who was still staring at the woman he had killed.

  He had killed her, Justin repeated to himself, he had killed her. And then Locke looked at Justin, who now tried backing away from the desk, towards the door. The tutor shook his head, and moved quickly to block the student’s exit. There was an impasse as neither now moved.

  Justin cast about the room, looking for any heavy object with which he might defend himself; he even thought of throwing himself out of the window to escape.

  Locke stepped forward and his fist connected with the side of Justin’s head. There was a flash of light, and then, instead of pain, darkness, and nothing.

  Justin opened his eyes and his mind reeled. He was unable to understand anything that he saw. He was sitting in a chair, at a slight distance from a long table behind which were seated Archer, Turbot, and another man he did not recognise. He looked down and he was wearing a suit.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Turbot asked.

  ‘I feel a little dizzy,’ he replied, noncommittally, putting his hand up to his nose and finding everything to be quite normal.

  There was no
t even any discomfort. In fact, physically he felt quite well. He looked again at the other people in the room, who stared back at him expectantly. He turned around in his chair but there was nobody else with them. They were in a small lecture room he had not been in before, on one of the upper floors.

  ‘I’ll put it to you another way,’ Turbot was saying, in quite a relaxed, friendly tone, ‘how do movements in contemporary art inform the rather traditional way that you choose to paint?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m a bit confused,’ was his reply. He stood up, almost involuntarily, but had to grab at the back of the chair to stop himself from falling over. His legs were very weak.

  ‘Would a drink of water help?’ asked Archer, concerned.

  ‘Perhaps we should end it now?’ the other man suggested. ‘We have been quizzing the poor chap for nearly twenty minutes, and there are other students to interview.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Archer. ‘We will let you know the result in due course. Don’t lose any sleep over it, though. You’ve done well.’

  The three men stood up and Turbot extended a hand from behind the table. ‘Well done, Justin. As Mr Archer says, don’t worry about the classification. You’ve done yourself proud over the last three years.’

  Justin took a breath and walked across the carpet to accept the handshake.

  ‘I’ll agree with that too,’ Archer added. ‘I thought at one point in the first year that you were going to fail dismally. And then there was that terrible, terrible business with poor Mr Locke and Miriam. I do think that both of you coped with the tragedy very well. You got yourself together and the improvement has been very marked.’

  ‘And I’m proud of you,’ the third nodded sagely. Justin did not know who he was. ‘I’ve seen how hard you’ve worked this year, and you’ll have your reward.’

  When Justin had shaken the third proffered hand he left the room, bewildered. Outside in the dark hallway two other students looked up at him nervously; Eddison and Jennings. From the studio at the far end there came the sounds of excited whispering. Justin, however, remained outside of the lecture room door. He was overwhelmed by the knowledge that time had somehow suddenly passed, but he did not know what had happened between what had occurred in Locke’s studio and finding himself in what appeared to be a viva voce.

  ‘You alright?’ whispered Eddison, and at that moment the door opened and Jennings was called in.

  ‘You look a bit shaky?’ Eddison continued once the door was shut again. ‘Did they give you the third degree in there?’

  ‘No… I don’t know,’ he replied, and started to walk away.

  ‘That was a joke!’ Eddison pointed out in a harsh whisper.

  Justin looked back over his shoulder and wished the other student good luck.

  As he neared the light from the studio door he could make out Judith coming towards him from the brightness ahead, and as they approached each other she held out her arms. He stopped a foot before her, but she came right up to him and gave him a very affectionate, intimate kiss.

  She sensed his uncertainty and pulled away.

  ‘Did it go badly?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied honestly. She seemed to expect more, so he said: ‘I suppose I’ll have to wait and see.’

  He didn’t recognise all of the students, and the surroundings of the third year studio seemed very strange. He evaded their questions and walked over to the window that gave a view up Infirmary Road. He found himself alone with Judith who hugged him, worried, but he did not feel able to respond.

  ‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ she asked, letting him go.

  ‘Who?’

  Judith seemed confused by his obvious ignorance.

  ‘She’s downstairs waiting for you.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Miriam?’ she said, refusing to believe that he did not understand her. ‘Your model?’

  And then she pointed to a three quarter length oil painting of the woman that Justin believed that he had only recently seen murdered by Locke.

  ‘Miriam?’ he asked

  ‘I don’t know what’s up with you,’ Judith said, suddenly angry with him. ‘But I think you’ve got to make a decision between her and me. I know that neither of you are ever going to explain what happened the night that Locke was killed; I’ve known that since we’ve been going out together. But you’ve spent so much time with her, painting your masterpiece. If that doesn’t get you a 2:1 then nothing will…’

  ‘A 2:1?’

  ‘Depending on your viva. But that’s not what I want to talk about. If she was just your model then you won’t need to see her again. You can go down and tell her to go away and leave you alone. But if she’s more than that to you…well, then go to her, but we’re finished.’

  He walked up to the portrait that he could see was well executed. Could he really have painted it? It was not badly done, and it was in oil, which was not his favourite medium. Perhaps it was a little stiff and slightly lifeless, but the personality of the model lifted it. The line of her cheekbones, the curve of her eyebrow… Was she really waiting for him downstairs?

  And Judith had referred to Locke being killed?

  He turned around but Judith was walking away. He was alone and confused, but downstairs, waiting for him, was a woman called Miriam whom he hoped would be able to tell him what had happened.

  LLANFIHANGEL

  It was perhaps an hour into the evening that I first really noticed Sally’s friend, James. He was a large, fleshy, almost bald man who tried to hide his weight by wearing a white linen suit that was perhaps two sizes too big for him. He hadn’t said a great deal over the dinner table, at least, nothing that I remembered as very interesting, but now I couldn’t stop looking at him and suspecting that I had seen him somewhere before. My interest had been aroused, I know, by the fact that I had caught him, several times, looking in my direction and then lowering his eyes to his food, or suddenly switching his attention to one of the many other guests he had not previously been speaking to.

  He was now in an armchair opposite me as I drank a second cup of coffee and he was enjoying one of our host’s large liqueurs. With the conversation fragmenting between the different guests around the room I said:

  ‘We weren’t properly introduced before. I’m…’

  ‘Stop!’ he insisted. Then, slowly, ‘I know you already. You’re Christopher Turner.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled, and shook his head slowly:

  ‘You really don’t recognise me, do you?’

  ‘I decided there was something familiar about you before we sat down to dinner.’ I don’t know why I immediately lied, but something about his manner put me on the defensive.

  ‘But you don’t know where you’ve seen me before?’

  ‘No, it’s been annoying me all evening,’ I continued what was, after all, only a partial untruth.

  ‘James? There was nobody at your school by that name?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, hesitantly, trying to remember anyone from thirty years ago by that name. ‘There was a James Wilson?…’ I said, getting ready to list as many of the Jameses that I could remember from the distant past.

  ‘Could I perhaps be James Wilson?’ he asked, a slightly sardonic pleasure evident in his cold smile.

  ‘No, I saw him just a couple of years ago.’

  ‘So who else was there?’

  ‘James Tobin?’

  He raised his eyebrows, and I was annoyed. I felt intimidated; only an old school-friend could bring back all the lack of self-confidence that had afflicted me as a boy.

  ‘You’re James Tobin?’

  ‘Imagine me rather slimmer, and with more hair…’

  James Tobin had always been rather large, but I wasn’t going to be rude. I remembered him as rather more sharp-featured, but many years had passed, after all. He also looked older than I thought he should have done.

  ‘Well I never,’ I said, feigning an instant remembrance. ‘It all comes back
to me now. You went off to university, to study advertising?’

  ‘Yes. But I have to admit I’ve forgotten what you did?’

  ‘Polytechnic. In Brighton. Electronic engineering.’

  ‘Did I know that?’ he asked genially. ‘I’m sure I did. And you were with that pretty girl at the time?’

  ‘Julie? No, we split up before the end of the sixth year. She decided that Neil Priest was likelier to succeed in life and hitched up with him. They’re married, living not far from where I live now. I keep in touch, but…’

  ‘Do you remember Sara?’

  ‘Sara who?’

  ‘You went out with her as well, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, not with a Sara. My only other girlfriend was Cara Penrose.’

  ‘Ah, I was getting around to mentioning Cara. Have you seen her in the last few years?’

  ‘No, not since school, actually. I’ve no idea what happened to her.’

  ‘I met her recently.’

  ‘Really, how is she?’

  ‘She’s not been too well. She’s had a bad time of it, poor thing.’

  ‘That’s rather sad. I’ve always had a soft spot for her. I didn’t treat her too well. You know, I left her for Julie, which was a mistake.’

  ‘Well, I met her in Wales. Like you, she didn’t recognise me at first. (Perhaps I’ve changed more than I think?) You know, you’re the only two from school I’ve met subsequently, and you were once a couple.’

  ‘That’s a coincidence.’

  ‘Well, you know what they say about coincidences? Statistically speaking, they have to happen from time to time. You have to start getting worried when they don’t happen…’

  ‘I suppose so. But, what’s happened to Cara?’

  ‘She’s been ill. She had been married to some chap, I don’t recall the name. He met her after school and she didn’t want to dwell on him. He knocked her about a bit.’

  ‘That’s awful.’