Life Class (13 page)

‘Well, secrecy was the whole point, wasn’t it?’ Fran said, struggling to repress an urge to giggle. Then she added, ‘If you think about it, her having her own Hotmail address was no different from you or me when we were young, expecting our parents to respect our privacy and not open our post.’

‘You say that now! We weren’t quite so laid back about it then. Do you remember how intransigent she was about keeping her password secret?’

‘The only fool proof internet monitoring system is to stand behind your children at all times and watch what they’re doing. We did the best we could by explaining the dangers of chat rooms and such.’

He sighed. ‘These days, there are so many more pitfalls for youngsters. They’ve all got mobile phones, who knows who they’re talking to? In the virtual world, any old loony can pass himself off as hunky twenty year old.’

‘The world’s getting scarier by the minute. I don’t even want to think about the dangers Mel’s exposed to now.’ Fran shuddered. ‘Thinking about it makes it more real.’

From concerned father, Peter’s tone changed to reassuring when he replied. ‘But Dory was right, wasn’t she? Mel’s not really in any more danger in Thailand than she is here. Try not to worry. Come on, let’s have a cup of tea. Are there any more biscuits? How is Dory, by the way? Did you go for lunch after class?’

‘Of course we went for lunch,’ Fran said. ‘We’re
ladies
, that’s what we do.’

They shared the tea-making duties. She filled the kettle and warmed the teapot. Peter found a new packet of biscuits and laid the tray, a nicety that she insisted upon – left to himself, it would be a tea bag in a mug.

‘We went to the new bistro,’ Fran said. ‘Dory loved it.’

‘How’s her house-hunting going?’

‘It isn’t going anywhere, if you ask me. She’s not taking it seriously. No, I’ll bring it through,’ Fran said, as he went to pick up the tea tray. ‘You go ahead and clear a space on the coffee table. I don’t want to get the blame for disturbing your papers.’ The dogs, alert for the heightened possibility of a tit-bit that a tea break heralded, capered around Fran’s ankles as she followed him into the sitting room.

‘Isn’t she registered with any estate agents?’

‘She is
now.
We visited a couple on our way back to the car.’

‘So, what do you mean?’

‘She seems a bit laid back about it, and the only property details she picked up were completely unsuitable.’

‘It’s her choice.’

‘I’m convinced she doesn’t know what she wants. When I point out she could get a dear little cottage for a similar price, she either ignores me or goes on about damp and mice.’

‘Fran, darling … you can’t organise everyone else’s life. At the moment, she’s only looking. She may ultimately buy a place you approve of, but she may not. It’s up to her.’

‘But from only collecting the details of horrid little modern boxes with no character, she suddenly goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and picks up the spec for a great big old house on Bull Hill. You should have seen the price! And it’s not even detached.’

‘She’s got the money. Why shouldn’t she buy what she wants with it, however much
you
might feel she’s making a mistake?’

‘But some of that’s the money she inherited.’

‘So? You want to be the arbiter of what should happen to your mother’s money?’

‘Of course not, but it should be something sensible.’

‘Fran, you couldn’t prevent your own daughter spending it the way she wanted. What makes you think Dory should listen to you?’

‘I don’t. The trouble is she’s vacillating; she’s got no focus.’

‘Collecting specifications is one thing, actually making a decision to buy a place is something else entirely. Looking at a variety of different places might help her sort out what she really wants. Did she say why she’s interested in this “big old house”, despite the possibility of mice and damp?’

‘Curiosity, to do with an escapade when we were kids. We climbed into the garden of a house near the common. I doubt if it’s even the same one. She
says
the main reason is because it’s got outbuildings. Wants to set up a business and work from home.’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that? Sounds focused to me. So she’s thinking of viewing some of the properties?’

Fran shrugged. ‘If she is, I’d like to tag along, I love looking at houses, but I’m getting the message she doesn’t want my opinion.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true, but maybe you should try to be a little less dogmatic.’

‘Dogmatic?’

‘You may be the eldest, but Dory is a grown-up now, remember? Old enough to make her own decisions and her own mistakes.’

Fran shook her head. ‘You’ll never guess what kind of business she’s got in mind.’

Chapter Thirteen - Dominic

As usual, Dominic had arrived at the class well before the other students. He’d carried the box of reference books up from the car and unrolled a poster and pinned it up where Stefan had said – next to the classroom’s whiteboard. Stefan had brought in the skeleton and set it up in the middle of the room. Over the following twenty minutes, as the rest of the students filtered in, it was a laugh to see the variety of reactions – from shock through to disgust – to this new member of class. To Dom, the skeleton looked sinister
and
laughable, hanging there limply askew – a bit like how he imagined a gibbet from the olden days.

Years ago, he and a group of other boys from the care home had been taken out for a picnic. An event like that, away from the city, was rare. The two staff members who’d supervised the trip had parked the minibus in a lay-by, at a spot where three lanes met, up above Sheepswick. The place was called Bear’s Cross, and around it were wide green verges, and woods, and unfenced meadows, and views into the hazy distance. It was summer; he could still remember the warmth and the buzz of insects and the fields of long grass and wild flowers that reached up above their waists. Most of all he recalled the acute sense of liberation when told that this bit of countryside wasn’t part of anyone’s farm or garden – it wasn’t even a park, where they were expected to behave themselves.

They’d ranged far, playing at zombies, space-legions, orcs – anything that involved shouting and running and clashing in amongst the trees and up and down over the drowsy, heat-soaked meadows. Dom had speculated about it later, but at the time he’d been too intoxicated to wonder why their carers, Phil and Karen, had allowed them such freedom to roam unsupervised. Why they had preferred to stay in the heat of the minibus for several hours. The most memorable aspect of that unusual day had been towards the end. Tired and thirsty, they’d come together to loll on the ground. As they sat amongst the wreckage of the picnic, drinking cola and munching crisps, Kyle – who said he’d come from nearby – had told a story.

He’d said how once, hundreds of years ago, there’d been a famous highwayman who’d held up stagecoaches at Bear’s Cross. He’d shot the men dead with his blunderbuss, and nicked jewellery and kisses off the women. But he’d been caught and sentenced to death, and hung on a gibbet just there, on that triangle of verge. The man had died slowly. His body had been left to rot as a warning to others who passed that way. Most spooky of all, the highwayman was said to haunt the place.

How long had he taken to die? How long to decompose to a skeleton? Even now, looking at the slightly pathetic collection of bones dangling in the centre of the room, Dom felt a subdued echo of that original icy chill down the back of his neck. He imagined the man, still in his raggedy, rotten highwayman garb, dangling from the gibbet at Bear’s Cross – the empty eye sockets of a skull looking out from under his tricorn hat.

‘I thought it would be an interesting exercise, and a bit of a change if we used this last lesson of term to think about human anatomy,’ Stefan said. Looking at the assembled class, Dom saw what Stefan saw – expressions of dismay, boredom, and resistance. This was the last session before Christmas and some of the women had dressed up in fancier clothes. The woman called Fran was wearing a string of fluffy tinsel draped round her, like a kind of twinkly scarf. The other blonde – the pair always seemed to be together – was wearing stupid earrings, like little Santas.

‘By the way, this fellow here …’ Stefan continued, lifting the skeleton’s hand and shaking it, ‘… is Oscar. He’s plastic. It’s hard to get your hands on the real thing these days, so he’ll have to do. Before any of you say you’re not doctors, so you don’t need to know anatomy, just think for a minute. When you come to draw or paint a
clothed
figure … imagine, for instance you’ve been commissioned to do a full-length portrait … your experience examining the
un
clothed figure will be a help to you. Let’s face it, your subject is not going to strip off just so you can see his crossed arms more clearly? The same goes for drawing the nude. It’s helpful to have a basic understanding of what’s going on beneath the skin.’ With his other hand, Stefan tapped the large poster Dom had put up, its simple anatomical diagrams of the body showing the major muscle groups.

‘But I was hoping to paint.’ Bill’s tone was plaintive. At the start of the morning he’d come in with a small canvas under his arm, a palette and brushes poked up out of his bag of equipment. ‘We’ve always had a long pose on the last day of term. Gives those that want to an opportunity to get stuck in with oils.’

Dom was impressed with how well Stefan controlled his face.

‘Look,’ Stefan said. ‘I
do
realise I’ve been asking more, some might say less, of you over the term than you were expecting. I don’t want to force anyone to do anything you really don’t want to do. But I haven’t misled you. Today, if you look at the schedule, I
have
written “surface anatomy”.’

‘Lost it,’ Liz said.

‘Me too’, echoed Fran proudly, as if it had been an entirely deliberate and rational decision.

Michael added, ‘I didn’t really believe it was going to be a
proper
anatomy lesson with a bloody skeleton. Shit!’

‘I’m not going to make you draw the skeleton. We have got a model, Sam, to draw, or even paint if you want to. She’s on her way and should be here any moment. But I’m sorry, I can’t give you the same pose for the duration of the lesson. I’ve gone to the trouble of bringing in Oscar, so I
am
going to teach anatomy. What
you
do,’ he looked at his watch, ‘for the next two hours and fifty minutes, is up to you.’

When Sam arrived a few minutes later, with many apologies, the lesson properly began. The class moved to their easels, tables, or donkeys and got out their materials. Sam was a lot younger, slimmer, and fitter than Tilly, Dom thought, with curly brown hair that was twisted into a coiled plait hanging at the nape of her neck. At Stefan’s request she lifted her plait and pinned it up. A fuzz of escaping hair made a hazy cloud around her face. Dom’s gaze moved lower; her bush was equally thick and abundant. He felt a disturbing stirring – not something that usually happened to him. He turned away, wishing his T-shirt was longer and baggier.

‘For the artist, a knowledge of what is known as “surface anatomy” is a tool to understand the figure,’ Stefan said. ‘The basis, of course, is the skeleton. It is the geology of the body. All human evolution is in the skeleton.’ He turned Sam round and talked about the major skeletal structures. ‘When you’re drawing the figure, an understanding of the skeleton gives you the main axes of the body. But overlaying the skeleton, allowing it to move, are the muscles. We only have a morning so I’m going to be very general and not burden you with names. There are too many and they overlay and crisscross one another …’

He pointed out the more obvious muscle groups on Sam. He drew simplified diagrams on the whiteboard. Between them, he and Oscar demonstrated the articulation of different joints. Stefan pointed out the knobby landmarks where the ligaments anchored the muscles to the skeletal frame. First asking her permission to touch, he lifted Sam’s arm and rotated it at the shoulder – ‘a ball and socket joint, like the hips,’ he said. Dom noticed her bushy armpits. ‘The elbow is a simple hinge joint – it only bends one way.’ Stefan bent her arm at the elbow. ‘So how can we do that?’ He twisted her forearm and looked at the surrounding faces. No one answered. ‘It’s because the muscles wrap around the arm. Groups of muscles work in antagonistic tension, pulling against one another in order to achieve the extraordinarily complex range of movement the body is capable of.’

‘And you learnt all this at art school,’ Liz asked. ‘It’s more than I did. When I was there it was the “Nobody can teach you art” period. How the tutors justified their job description and taking their salaries at the end of the month, I don’t know. More important than displaying ability was what you
said
about your art. I got sick of being asked
why
I’d done something, or what it
meant!
Forget anatomy, we hardly did any life drawing.’

Stefan looked pained. ‘It was like banging your head against a brick wall, wasn’t it? I apologise in retrospect. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the teaching of art was grossly misguided. The concept of learning a craft was abandoned. Would anyone attempt to teach a musical instrument to degree level without the student first learning to read music?’ Dom could hear anger in his raised voice. But then Stefan dragged his hand down over his face and shook his head.

‘Of course I didn’t do anatomy as a fine art undergraduate in the UK. It wasn’t until I went to the States, to the Graduate School of Figurative Art. If you want the full-on, pre-1960s art education experience, that’s where you should go. It has the rigour which art education in this country has lacked for too long. Fortunately, it appears some of that rigour is coming back. We shall see. I’ll be interested to get an overview of what the experience is like for a student going through the system now.’ He caught Dominic’s eye. ‘But there were a lot of us, those who went to art college in the latter decades of the last century, who were let down by the trendy ideas of the time.’

‘Sounds like you’re a bit of a traditionalist.’