I’d agreed to share reminiscences of those days, as part of the programme, foolishly including my prowess as member of the junior eleven in shorts run up from blackout material.
‘“Careless talk costs lives”,’ I said, quoting another wartime adage
Jimmy had commiserated with Miss Quintock over the frugality of post-war educational supplies. Paint, brushes, canvas, paper – the stock in trade of an artistic existence – were similarly unobtainable; to the Squire even, so it appeared. No wonder he turned to whatever came to hand: newspaper, wood, cardboard, discarded packaging, even the backs of pictures he’d previously painted. He’d no choice in the matter really, and it always seemed to me that the philosophical justification for such an approach came later, theory following on from practicality as an after-thought almost. Maybe I do him an injustice? All I know is what I picked up from chance remarks made in my presence. ‘
Authenticity’ had been a word frequently on lips, meaning little to me at the time, nor – till now – when obliged to follow it through.
‘Lauding the natural over man-made products,’ I suggested. ‘The reason for all those pebbles; the twigs, egg shells, leaf mould and the other “treasures” he’d produce from about his person?’
Helen agreed. ‘Just like the thrush in Home Thoughts, never recapturing the “first fine moment of rapture”.’
‘“Magpie moments” according to Miss Quintock. Ideas came easily to Jimmy and he’d flit from one of them to the other.’
The ‘magic of the moment’ that had been his name for it. To delay, as in the cutting of a block or the cranking of a press, was to dilute. Nothing less than ‘actuality’, the recapturing of direct experience, would suffice. And nowhere was this more evident than in his struggles with – and failure at – the mastery of colour.
Biros, just coming onto the market, were expensive, banished from Miss Quintock’s classroom on grounds of social equality; for more practical reasons also, as being bad for our handwriting. Fountain pens being similarly forbidden on account of their messiness. We were expected to write, and write neatly, with those strange wooden stick pens with detachable nibs you see nowadays in museums. This entailed frequent dippings into white ceramic inkwells – currently selling for a fortune in antique shops – the ‘ink’ arriving as powder in large sacks at the beginning of each term. The responsibility of mixing the powder with tap water was assigned to the ‘ink monitor’: the boy or, far more likely, girl who’d demonstrated the greatest cleanliness during the preceding weeks.
‘No easy task,’ I remembered. ‘Too much liquid and you’d get an anaemic greyish fluid, quite illegible; too little and there’d be ink blotches everywhere. Gave my younger brother Luke nightmares for weeks just thinking about it. Once the brew reached precisely the right consistency, the inkwells had to be filled from an old-fashioned watering can kept in the cupboard. By which time the monitor usually looked like an ancient Briton setting out to meet the Romans and had forfeited their place in the “cleanliness” league for months to come.’
Jimmy had been fascinated by the whole process, but it earned him the first of many classroom scoldings. He’d reached down into one of the sacks and thoughtfully rubbed some of the powder between finger and thumb. A large quantity spilt on the floor and the teacher rounded on him, just as if he’d been one of her pupils. He slunk away with muttered apologies, but returned next day with a packet of powdered egg, left over – so he said – from his wartime provisions. Miss Quintock, somewhat ashamed of the way she had spoken to him in front of the class, was prevailed upon – and Jimmy was the only one who could have done this – to spare a small quantity of her precious blue powder. ‘Sun and sky,’ he told us, spilling both out onto a sheet of white paper, ‘but what about the grass?’ One of the girls remembered lettering of this colour that had decorated her birthday cake, and the class went on to debate other ingredients that might be used in lieu of paint, were it not for post-war austerity: mustard, flour, coffee – or ground acorn as it was in those days.
Matters might have ended there had not Miss Quintock brought out that precious book of hers and written some of Blake’s lines on the blackboard. Some of the few I have learnt by heart:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour?
Helen recognised them immediately: ‘Auguries of Innocence’.
‘A good title,’ I said, ‘considering what happened next.’
One of the children, Charlie Dowse I think it was, came back from a seaside holiday clutching his souvenir – an hour-glass – to ‘share’ with the rest of the class during one of our ‘Treasure Trove’ mornings. Miss Quintock made a great show of demonstrating precisely how it worked, turning it upside down and allowing the sand to trickle through the narrow aperture between top and bottom. She told us about the importance of such instruments before the time of watches, how the glass was first blown then pinched at the centre and how only the finest sand could be used. Then next day, which coincided with one of Jimmy’s visits, she brought in one of her own ‘treasures’: a glass phial containing a similar kind of sand of differing colours layered one on top of the other in a series of stripes. Jimmy sat all this time at the back of the class, but was unusually silent. Afterwards he disappeared without a word, nor was there any sign of him for ten days or so when he reappeared looking as if nothing untoward had happened and bringing another of his mysterious packages with him. Miss Quintock handed over a pair of scissors; Jimmy cut the string, stripped away the brown paper.
‘By now we knew what to expect, a picture of course, and I don’t know why, the subject-matter perhaps, maybe because we’d had no hand in the outcome, but it failed to grab our attention. Just an ordinary sunset. You know the kind of thing: blue sky, blood-red orb sinking beyond a green horizon, leafy trees casting long shadows in the foreground, with a charcoal-grey pathway snaking its way between them. You can pick them up in junk shops, umpteen to the dozen.’
Helen grimaced. ‘Sounds like Mother would have loved it.’
‘Not if she kept it around the house for any length of time. Turned out he’d used the back of a wooden tray and sand rather than paint. God knows how he’d come by the ingredients to produce such varied colours, nor how he’d stuck these to the surface, except that it stank of fish, leaving a gritty trail behind, like dandruff, in its wake. Not even your father could have smuggled that picture into his study.’
Grains of Infinity had introduced Jimmy to the use of colour and, for the moment, only this would do. Nothing, though, must come between him and the creative experience. Previously he’d worked with pencil, chalk, charcoal, coal even. All elemental, straight from the soil, with nothing man-made about them. From now on he insisted that only pigments derived directly from the world of nature would do. Whether he genuinely believed the creation of such a palette added to the intrinsic merit of the work, enhanced his experience of the artist or that of those who viewed it was never made clear. Maybe it was just an idea picked up from one of our lessons on the mediaeval artists or one of the books Miss Quintock had lent him.
‘Whatever the reason,’ I continued, ‘he had us out scouring the countryside for earth, mud, bricks, stones, the wings of butterflies, bodies of beetles, grinding them into powder, expecting to reproduce the azures, umbers and cochineals we’d seen in Renaissance paintings. Our parents were horrified; we’d arrive home in a filthy state, our clothes dirty and torn. By which time Jimmy had turned to botany and we were forbidden to help as he searched out plants and roots of all kind. First he tried mixing them with water – a complete failure till he brought it to the boil, which wasn’t much better. Not till he had a breakthrough, culled from some radio programme, I think: the use of egg white. Tempera, I believe it’s called.’
‘That,
along with salt and vinegar.’ Helen nodded her confirmation.
This had the required effect, producing a variety of colours: blue from elderberries, yellow from parsley, green from carrots, orange from dock leaves and brown from hawthorn. Applying these to wood, paper or any of a variety of surfaces was quite another matter; either they failed to bond or, if they did, resulted in the palest, most anaemic of hues. These ingredients were, in any case, in short supply at the time, so unless he was to concentrate on miniatures, there was no future in the project. Especially when Miss Quintock returned from the Easter holidays and was horrified to discover what we were up to.
‘You do realise some of your ingredients are toxic?’
‘Toxic?’ queried Jimmy.
‘Poisonous!’
Which concluded Jimmy’s efforts in that particular field – or back garden, pond or slag heap for that matter. He continued to use colour to great effect, but always from tubes, supplied no doubt by the Squire as and when they became available and over-painting his failures with fresh efforts. ‘Palimpsests’, he told us – a new word. Miss Quintock wrote it up on the blackboard and we copied it into our exercise books as she attempted to enlighten us. But later that week, leant back against the war memorial, Tim, Chunky, myself and the rest of our classmates sprawled out before him, Jimmy explained it to us in the way he knew best. A vivid story, full of incident; holding our attention, but which – like the Postbag Papers – I only fully appreciated in retrospect.
* * *
A traveller fancying himself as a connoisseur of fine art goes off to Russia. He visits all the galleries, admires the paintings and decides to do a bit of exploring – as much as his guide allows him to do. The ‘Great Patriotic War’ has just ended and, all over the country, religious images are being removed from the churches and destroyed. He ends up in a little village in the back of beyond and spends the night drinking vodka with the innkeeper, who lets him into a secret. Their own special treasure, the holy Icon of Ekatesburg, which has been venerated by the villagers down the centuries, was smuggled out of the local monastery just minutes before the government troops arrived. Only he and the abbot know where it is hidden. The traveller begs to be shown the icon; the innkeeper demurs at first, then agrees. They stumble out into the night, making their way through a blizzard and follow a treacherous pathway into the hills. At long last they reach a secret cave where, by the light of the flickering lantern, the visitor sees the most beautiful object he has ever encountered.
It must be added to his collection. How much is it worth, he asks? The innkeeper is horrified. This is not merely a picture, but a holy object, painted with devotion, imbued with the prayers of each successive generation. Down the years men and women have given their lives to defend it; the spirituality of the village itself resides within this icon. The traveller persists, offering the innkeeper a large sum of money. Think what could be done with such wealth, he says. The people could be clothed and fed. New houses could be built, the roads repaired; the inn itself is badly in need of renovation. The innkeeper hesitates. The traveller offers him twice, then three times the amount. Think of what might be done for the monastery. There could be a school, a new church devoted to Our Lady. At last, with the greatest reluctance and at five times the original sum, the innkeeper reluctantly gives way. But the greatest secrecy was needed, and how would it be possible to get such a distinctive item past customs and out of the country?
Back at the inn, they think long and hard over this until, at last, mine host has an idea. Young Igor Orlinksi fancies himself as an artist. Has turned his back on socialist realism and fills all the canvasses he can lay his hands on with the most outrageous daubs. Get him to paint one of his dreadful concoctions over the icon; he’d do it for next to nothing, and the customs men would probably pay good roubles to get it out of the country! But, protests the traveller, that would destroy the icon itself; not if Igor covers it with a thick coat of vanish first, the ingenious innkeeper replies.
So that is what they do. The money is paid over, Igor delightedly obliges with the gaudiest of abstracts and the picture passes without question through customs. Back home, the garish top colours and the varnish are carefully removed, revealing the Madonna of Ekatasburg in all her glory. The traveller is delighted with the success of his ruse and prepares to exhibit his new acquisition to the public. But first, for insurance purposes, he must get it valued. He hurries to the most respected of fine art specialists in London, who examine it carefully using the latest technology, then shake their heads. This is no masterpiece, they tell him. The wood on which it is painted is no more than ten years old, as are the materials that have been used. As for the brushstrokes: quite modern also. No iconographer would have approached his subject in this way. Far better to have invested his money in the new art which is coming out of Russia. Take these, for example. The work of Igor Orlinski. Anything by him fetches a five-figure sum these days, and so difficult to get hold of that their value must be increasing even as we speak…
Chapter Eight
The Indignant Page
It must have been three or four years after the first of Jimmy’s classroom appearances that those of us in the top form moved on to the next stage in our education. At which point our paths began to diverge. Tim and I donned the maroon blazers, long grey trousers and segmented bi-coloured caps favoured by St Hugh’s High, whilst Andrew, Chunky, Charlie and the rest were permitted the relaxed dress code adopted by the Joseph Freeman County Secondary School. To begin with we’d hurry home, both of us, eager to be rid of these objectionable garments before rushing out to join the others, just as we’d done since childhood. But things were never really the same.
We’d had our quarrels before. Over the sharing out of apples scrumped from the Squire’s orchard, the swapping of cigarette cards, or the merits of one football club over another. Teasing, too. Charlie nicknamed ‘Blinkers’ because he wore glasses, Chunky for his girth and Tim on account of his sister’s love-life. Squabbles that frequently ending in scraps; two small boys rolling in the dust egged on by a screaming ring of rival supporters, or pitched battles, one faction against the other. Allegiances were constantly changing within the group; alliances formed, then broken. But here was something quite different. Regardless of what had gone before, despite all efforts at concealment, parental ambition percolated insidiously downward. A line of demarcation had been drawn, between the ‘freemaniacs’ and ‘humites’ as we came to be known, corroding even the closest of relationships, inexorably dragging each of us from the orbit of former friendship.
We saw much less of Jimmy as well, Tim and I, taking up with Giles rather, younger brother of Vernon memorialised in the parish church.
‘This him?’ Helen, who’d been fishing around the documents, pulled a ragged photo from the pile. ‘Tall gangly lad, so you said.’ She held it up admiringly. ‘Seems attractive enough to me. Dishy almost.’
‘Son and heir to the Amberstone estate no less. “Gerundive” to us on account of his classical public school education. Superior even to St Hugh’s. My parents couldn’t have been more pleased.’
I retained close ties with Miss Quintock, though. My own brother, Howard, had just entered the village school and was to spend five more glorious years in her company.
‘Or so we expected.’
What happened next reached me through a variety of sources: snatches of parental conversation, guarded and brought to a sudden halt when my presence became know; gossip overheard around the village and innuendo from teachers at St Hugh’s – all of it caught but not fully understood. And, of course, there were the tales from the chalk-face that young Howard brought home with him. Her absent-mindedness, for example. Forgetting pupils’ names or the homework she’d set. Repeating the same lesson twice on successive days, and once – unbelievably – forgetting to take the register. Then there was the time she attempted to write on the blackboard with a
pencil and the occasion she’d cycled into school, ready to start teaching, on a Sunday. Stories were also circulating about her strange shopping habits: large quantities of breakfast cereals, ordering meat from the chemist, wine from the butcher – and, as everyone knew, she was strictly teetotal.
All of which had been going on for six months or so before matters came to a head, reaching me verbatim from Howard and his classmates.
Jimmy had arrived at the school, primed to discuss the continental migration of birds to our part of the world. But there’d been none of the usual greeting from Miss Quintock. At first she seemed startled, shook her head in disbelief, then smiled – in a way she’d never smiled before.
‘Home, Reg?’ she enquired. ‘So soon. But how wonderful.’ And, throwing down her papers, she clasped both his hands in hers. Some in the class giggled, others pivoted to get a better view; most remained rooted to their desks in horrified silence.
Jimmy, once he recovered from his initial surprise, was – by all accounts – splendid. Taking her gently by the arm he led her to the door. ‘Class monitor,’ he instructed, ‘take over. And no nonsense from anyone. Margaret, you’re a sensible girl. Go tell the Rev. Draper he’s wanted here. Off with you now!’ He made way to let the girl pass, but not before our teacher had flung her arms around his neck, nor swiftly enough for her to hear the words she whispered in his ear: ‘Don’t ask it of me, Reg. Not long now. I’ll do anything you ask. You know that. But we must wait.’
After which the red-faced parson arrived to keep the class occupied for the rest of the morning. They paid him little attention, not with Jimmy sitting out there on the bench in the courtyard holding their teacher’s hand and continuing to whisper to her. Not with the ambulance arriving, his guiding her into it, making his way back to the classroom to have a few hurried words with the rector before turning to the pupils, shrugging his shoulders and disappearing without a word. That afternoon the school was dismissed early. What we failed to realise at the time was that none of us – neither Howard nor myself, Tim, the Freemaniacs, nor the rest of her pupils – were to set eyes on Enid Quintock again.
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