SEVEN DAYS (15 page)

One of the guys was called Bernard. He was in his sixties and said that he was here, because his wife had told him it was never too late to change career. He was a salesman of medical products and did a lot of driving, but since his eyesight was an issue these days, he didn't feel comfortable doing long hours on the road. He remarked that a lot of art these days didn't seem to have sight as a prerequisite and he'd always considered himself more of an impressionist anyway.

Kevin was a slim guy with a goatee. Like Judy, he was dressed smartly and she wondered if he had a flight routine too. She had been about to ask him, when she realised that his girlfriend, Yvonne, had also made it onto the course. She, it seemed, was his flight routine. If she hadn't been accepted, he wouldn't have come. Whenever he opened his mouth to speak, she spoke for him.

That left Simon, who was dazzlingly handsome, with eyes that sparkled and made her think of the sea. Perhaps he could have been a surfer dude. He wasn't so much chiselled as smoothed over time and she could imagine him riding a board, waiting for a wave, with his eyes glinting along with the water, hour after beautiful hour.

Unfortunately for her libido, he was gay.

So that left Andre. A long shot.

And the instructor. A no-no.

She told herself to be neither so hasty nor so lusty. Her main reason for coming was to rekindle her love of drawing and painting. Finding someone to share a bed was something that Lisa had put into her head.

Her phone buzzed and she saw two messages. The first welcomed her to the country and a new network. The second was from Lisa. It said:

“Go get them, darling. x.”

She blushed, but she also thought:

What with?

She yelped when a man in a mask stomped up the steps of the bus. Nobody moved or said a word. He grabbed the first handrail, breathing heavily.

The mask was made of plain, white material, with a great hole in the shape of a smile serving for the mouth. His hair was visible. Dark. Wavy. Unkempt.

He was dressed in blue jeans and a smart casual jacket over a white T-shirt.

Unsettled, everyone looked at Andre for their queue. He looked more relaxed than ever now that the masked man had arrived, which unsettled some people further, but reassured others.

The man gave Andre a carrier bag and Andre then got up and started distributing the contents to the passengers.

“Welcome to the Trignac Art Retreat,” the masked man said. “My name...is not important. Neither is yours for the time being. I want you to forget who you are or who you think you are or who you're trying to be. Some people say that you should 'just be yourself', but I don't want you to be that. Today, you're nothing. You're not really here. At most, you're an observer.”

Andre handed Judy something from the bag. It was a large white mask, just like the one worn by the man at the front of the bus.

There were two holes beneath the eyes and a strip of elastic. Almost everybody else had theirs. They were wearing them and laughing and she felt uneasy, being the odd one out.

“Put it on,” Andre said, reassuringly.

She did so.

It was strange, but she did feel something happen to her. It was instant.

Her breathing was amplified by the mask, because there was no nose hole and she could feel her breath warming her face and roaring in her ears. Again, she was thinking of the sea, of waves washing through her mind and carrying old, disjointed thoughts far, far away. Flotsam and jetsam. Ideas of who she was supposed to be and who people were supposed to think she was.

For a moment, she felt silly, but everyone else was wearing masks too and bit by bit, minute by minute, she let go.

“...I'd say more,” the man at the front was saying, “but I need to get my breath.” He wheezed. “Andre, open this window, there's a good man.”

“Rough night?” Bernard asked.

“Rough month,” the man replied.

Judy knew that voice. It was the sound of Autumn leaves again. Could it be him?

* * * *

Neither the masked man nor Andre explained where they were going or how long it would be before they got there and for a while Judy worried that she had missed an email or hadn't received a welcome pack in the post, but something about the mask and the new guy's casual, confident and relaxed attitude made her want to be like him. After a few minutes, she was able to let go of her anxieties and simply enjoy the ride. Not knowing at what time they were supposed to arrive was anxiety-inducing, but it was also freeing, because it meant that she couldn't worry about being late.

The minibus rumbled along massive roads flanked by fields and farms. The radio was filtering 80s pop into the bus. Kevin and his girlfriend were chatting, but nobody else knew each other so they talked less.

For some time, Judy was worried that she couldn't get into the right clique and would have to spend the week not quite in sync with all the other groups, but again, the mask seemed to pull her from her concerns, as if they weren't real. She was an observer. These problems didn't exist to observers.

She was absorbed by the alien sights. The houses and cottages were all different from each other, unlike the dusty, flat-pack facsimile in which she lived. There were animals everywhere: goats and sheep and dogs and deer, geese and swans, donkeys and horses. A dragonfly landed on her window, fluttered its wings for her and then took off on an invisible current, a true surfer.

She felt herself accept the new environment with its cliffs and castles, crags and canyons.

This is like nothing I've ever known, she told herself. And neither am I.

When the bus stopped and Andre clapped his hands together to signal they had reached their stop, Judy was surprised, but then corrected herself. They hadn't said where they were going, so why should she be surprised to arrive?

Their lodging was an impressive stone building covered in vines and roses. It stood in front of a sandy cliff and even seemed to lean against it for support. Grand and old. From the outside, it appeared to Judy to have at least eight rooms over two floors and on entering she decided that that had been conservative.

Andre gave them a tour of the building, while the instructor sat heavily in a chair in the reception room. He definitely had the air of a man who had been on an alcohol binge. Not an inspiring sight. His head lolled and he seemed to be asleep.

“This way,” said Andre, drawing the group's attention back to the magnificent building.

“It must take an army to clean,” someone said, looking at the high ceilings and gleaming surfaces.

“Yes,” Andre agreed. “An army.”

They passed through a set of double doors, down some steps and into a large, old-fashioned canteen where they would be eating three meals a day. It reminded Judy of the dining room at her senior school where the 'privileged' had been able to sit with the headmistress at the 'high' table.

Here, two tables had been pushed together, arranged in a square, with eleven chairs around the outside. Andre handed everyone menus for the week and explained how they should fill them in.

From the canteen, Andre took them back upstairs, down a dingy corridor with oily, dark portraits staring from the walls and into the art studio itself, a very light and airy room, with massive glass windows and three skylights. Eleven easels were set up in a rough inner circle, while the outer circle consisted of cabinets and cupboards labelled in English and French: pencils, brushes and paints, paper and card of varying shades and weights.

Their feet resounded on the tile floor, which had been swept but was indelibly and deliciously stained with drips of paint from brushes, spread around and worked in by artists unknown.

The atmosphere was magical and Judy felt her pulse pick up like a revving race car. The chemical smell excited her. It was really going to happen. She was going to create something new. In this room. Maybe even that day.

Back in the reception room, the masked instructor lethargically handed everyone keys and sent them up the stairs to their rooms. Each key had a tag with a name but no number.

When Judy received her key, the instructor said:

“Yours was a late application, so you have to share.”

“Who with?” Judy asked.

He nodded towards the rock chick in her white mask and black garb.

And then he was on his way out of the room before either of them could protest.

“And no-one's to remove their masks,” he called, turning. “Not even to kiss. We're going out for dinner and drinks this evening. Compulsory. You're due back on the bus in fifteen minutes. And there's no need for anyone to change. You're all beautiful as you are.”

“Luggage?” Andre asked him.

“Done,” the instructor replied.

Indeed, everyone's luggage was waiting for them in their rooms. Judy didn't know what anybody else's room was like, but she thought that hers was wonderful. The beds were beautifully-made and there were two bedside tables adorned with vases of flowers, the clear water inside glinting in the sunlight that filtered into the room. The room looked out onto the back of the building, where steps led steeply up the rock slope and away into a garden with amazing, vibrant flowers and flourishing trees. Something, perhaps a deer, bounded into the distant tree line.

“Wow,” Judy said.

“What?” the rock chick asked.

“Nothing,” said Judy.

“Sounded very exciting for nothing,” she said. She was pulling off her boots and peeling off her tight, leather trousers. More tattoos. She was covered in so much ink that Judy couldn't make out what she was looking at. She spotted a black butterfly, however, and a black garter, too. It all seemed to have been drawn on a weird background that obscured the foreground though.

“He said not to change clothes,” Judy reminded her.

“You fuckin' kiddin' me? In this heat?”

“I was just saying.”

“Maybe he wanted to see who the good girls were, who did as they were told, and who the bad girls were, who did what they want.”

“Maybe.”

“And as for not removing our masks...” She flipped her mask up and fixed Judy with her dark, dark eyes. Her face was almost as pale as the mask itself. “You've already seen my mush,” she said, “so I don't think this makes much difference either.” She left the mask on top of her head while she finished pulling off her trousers, then opened up her rucksack and retrieved a slip of material that turned out to be a skirt.

“Well, he's definitely going to notice that,” Judy observed.

“You think I got here by doing as I'm told?” she said. “More to the point, how did you get here?” Her voice was accusatory.

“I entered and earned my place,” Judy said, “just like you.”

“Not like me,” the girl replied, wiggling into the miniskirt.

“Maybe you're upset that you have to share your room, but -”

“Last year, I was accepted onto the course, but then they realised that my application was one day late,” the girl told her. “They said that I should try again next year. This year, I submit on time, and I have to share with you, even though your application was late. That’s not fair, is it?”

“I'm sorry,” Judy said, “but that’s not my fault.”

“So tell me,” the girl said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Whose cock did you suck to get here?”

“What?”

“Or maybe cock's not your thing.”