Invisible River Page 5

  ‘Oh, she wants him to behave when he meets her flash friends. Be different to what he is,’ says Rob.

  ‘Is that what Mick says?’

  ‘What flash friends?

  ‘TV people. She wants to work in TV.’

  ‘Why’s she doing sculpture?

  ‘How should I know? She’s got herself some job doing a commercial in Barbados.’

  ‘Is Zeb going?’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘It’s probably very passionate,’ says Bianca, ‘very sexy to be so bad tempered.’

  ‘Is it?’ I say.

  ‘And very addictive,’ says Bianca.

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘I know all about boyfriends, I’ve had oh so many boyfriends,’ says Bianca, lying down on the slab and looking up at the big plane tree, and stretching her hands out as if she wants to touch it. ‘All about boyfriends, all about addiction.’

  She draws the twiggy branches with her fingers up in the air, opening one eye and closing the other. Wherever she lounges she looks elegant. She wears a shirt from Guatemala with bright pink and green and blue squares and stripes, embroidered with red thread, and a pair of linen culottes with braces, both slung over one shoulder. No one else could wear the eccentric clothes Bianca wears.

  ‘What were you addicted to?’

  ‘Heroina! Now I have hepatitis as my protector. Without it I would go out and score right now!’

  ‘Would you really?’ says Roberta, rubbing her belly.

  ‘Of course!’

  I notice Zeb and Suzanne have stood up and she is gesticulating this way and that, shaking her head about so her long hair quivers.

  I can hear the sound of her crossness from here but not the words.

  ‘Everybody is addicted to something.’ Bianca carries on tracing the twigs.

  ‘Don’t think I am,’ says Roberta.

  ‘Your baby! And your painting, and when it comes they will conflict!’ says Bianca, who often makes pronouncements with great authority.

  Roberta shrugs and smiles.

  ‘What about me?’ I ask. ‘What d’you think I’m addicted to?’

  ‘You are addicted to the pain of unrequited love!’

  I put my hand up to my mouth. I want to say, ‘We’re friends, it’s not like that!’ but my mouth stays open behind my hand and I don’t say anything.

  ‘However, as we can see, he has his own addiction.’ Bianca waves towards the arguing couple.

  Roberta laughs.’ Don’t be silly, they’re just friends.’ She nods at me and Zeb.

  ‘Hmm-hmm-hmm,’ sings Bianca with her eyes closed.

  The door to the sculpture department slams and Suzanne has stormed off in a huff.

  ‘I didn’t say they didn’t love each other,’ Bianca says with her eyes still closed.

  ‘Yes, I think they do,’ says Roberta, looking at the door.

  But Bianca didn’t mean them.

  I watch her as she lies there, the twig shadows trembling on her face. Sometimes she has to lie very still and be quiet. Her illness makes her suddenly tired.

  ‘Does it make you tired being pregnant?’ Cecile asks Rob.

  ‘Nope!’ says Rob.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’

  Roberta shrugs. ‘Think so.’

  ‘I loathe babies, they are so disgusting!’ says Bianca.

  ‘How can you say that!’ says Cecile.

  ‘No really!’ Bianca says, getting up on her elbow. ‘I was in a restaurant. A woman took out her tit and began to feed her baby, milk everywhere, all over the baby’s face, all over the tit! Porca miseria! I stopped eating! I couldn’t eat! It was too disgusting.’ She lies back down and closes her eyes. ‘They should hide them away! Roberta, when you have your baby, hide it! Put it away in a cupboard or something!’

  I look at Rob to see if she’s offended but she gives me a laughing exasperated look.

  ‘Lucky your mother didn’t think like that, Bianca!’ she says.

  ‘She did! She was a totally unnatural mother! Why do you think I am so fucked up! She telephones me with her anxiety: “Bianca, what are you going to do about this? What are you going to do about that?” When I leave the telephone I’m a nervous wreck! Listen, she could win a PRIZE for anxiety! She worries about EVERY THING! She’s thinner than me!’

  Chapter 16

  ‘FIRST-YEAR CRITICAL ASSESSMENTS’ it says on the door.

  I don’t like waiting out here with all my work, I don’t want to spread it all around the room and have them riffle through my sketchbooks asking the reasons for things and entering my private world as though they have special privileges. I have left the new drawings upstairs, in case the ideas get frightened off by the scrutiny.

  Sinéad comes out the door and makes a face at me. Her eyes slide diagonally down to stare at the floor, as if to say ‘You have no idea how horrible that was!’

  Tutors follow her out with stretchers and stacks of sketchbooks, and pile them outside the room.

  Inside, three of the tutors stand with their arms folded, talking to each other by the window. The door swings back and forth as the other two bring work through, back and forth, till all her work is outside the door.

  There are five altogether. Terry, who’s always drunk, Paul, the head of painting, Sergei, who made Cecile cry, Tom, who has a streak of kindness in him, and one with an orange beard who speaks to you as if he suspects you of something. I glimpse them all as the door swings back and forth.

  ‘Would you like to bring your work through?’

  I follow them in with a pile of sketchbooks. It is a big square empty room with splashes of paint on the floor and windows down one side. There are some grey tables near the wall and a stack of red chairs. They put the sketchbooks on the grey tables and the rest of the paintings round the room, propped up, or scattered on the floor.

  There is the painting of Cambridge Circus, with turquoise lamp-posts and orange buildings, with a black and white sky and wet pavements. There is the purple sky and yellow light the night the robber ran past. There is the river in the dawn, and the river at dusk, and a portrait of Roberta painted with a carmine background. There are sketches of Sloane Square made with black ink, and watercolours of dawn from the police pier.

  They flick through the sketchbooks and breathe in, slightly bored, as they look. They stand around looking at the pictures.

  I am so glad I didn’t bring my new drawings. The sketchbook is hidden upstairs.

  Except one has slipped through.

  Sergei picks it up and looks at it.

  ‘Keep away from this kind of thing, you’re better at drawing what you see,’ he says, holding it in front of him with a finger and thumb for me and the others to see.

  It is a blue figure with the head and wings of a swan.

  Paul turns the corners of his mouth down and moves his head from side to side, assessing.

  ‘I don’t mind it.’

  The red-haired man with the beard doesn’t say anything but looks at me suspiciously. He flicks through a sketchbook.

  Then he says, ‘What are you trying to achieve here?’

  ‘You mean at art school?’

  ‘No, on the planet. Yes! At art school!’

  ‘Umm . . . to learn to paint.’

  ‘But what for?’

  I wish I was Italian or pregnant, I’m sure it would make it easier to answer these questions.

  ‘How do you justify being an artist?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I mean this is very nice . . . soufflé! but what about MEAT AND POTATOES! I’d like to see some MEAT AND POTATOES in your work instead of this . . . soufflé!’

  I’m confused by the soufflé.

  ‘Why don’t you make more LARGE sketches?’

  ‘She needs to make bigger paintings.’

  ‘Yes, use less colour’

  ‘And bigger brushes. Make a breakthrough!’

  Paul nods. ‘Yes, you need to make a breakthrough. T
his is all very well, but it’s . . . very pretty.’

  ‘Yes, you need to think outside the box.’

  ‘As it is, you could even call it . . . illustrative.’

  ‘Maybe go into monochrome. Try a seven-foot canvas!’

  ‘Paint with a wallpaper brush. Expand your ideas!’

  ‘Stay away from this imaginary . . . stuff,’ says Sergei, nodding and putting the offensive drawing back in the pile.

  I leave the assessment room in a state of shock, and carry my canvases and sketchbooks up the stairs.

  ‘What was it like?’

  Bianca is standing over the red ring with the coffee in her hand. ‘I have just made a pot for you.’

  Roberta is sitting on the sofa with her hands wrapped round a mug.

  ‘Yes, how did it go?’

  Cecile is on the mattress. She looks up.

  I sit down next to Roberta. I just shake my head and can’t find words. ‘Oh, something about meat and potatoes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And soufflé. Oh, I’m just glad that’s over, I don’t know what I’m going to do next term, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, when they expect to see a seven-foot canvas in monochrome painted with a wallpaper brush!’

  ‘Is that what they want?’

  ‘Why do they always want everything to be enormous?’

  ‘What do you want to paint?’ asks Cecile.

  ‘Small paintings, with more colour, from my imagination.’

  She nods. ‘Well, you do that then.’

  I take my coffee from Bianca. ‘Just as long as I don’t end up with that bloody Sergei as my tutor next term.’

  Chapter 17

  The next day when I go upstairs, Bianca is packing up her studio.

  ‘Will this still be your space after Christmas?’

  ‘Yes, thank God!’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad. Me and Rob are keeping ours.’

  ‘Are you going home for Christmas?’ asks Bianca.

  ‘Don’t want to much,’ I say.

  ‘No? Not to see your mother and father? The family?’

  ‘My mum’s dead, Bianca.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘Yes. But how?’

  ‘She drowned.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘No one knows really, she went swimming.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Can you remember?’

  ‘No. I can’t remember a thing about it.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘The funeral, vaguely.’

  ‘You blanked out the rest?’

  I shrug. ‘I suppose so. But I don’t remember her very well, anyway, she wasn’t around much.’

  ‘What about your father? Did he remarry?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why do you say it like that?’

  ‘Because I wish he had.’

  ‘Do you?’ says Bianca. ‘A stepmother?’

  ‘Someone to bloody look after him!’

  ‘Is he old?’

  ‘No, but he drinks too much.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I think he’s been holding it together for me . . .’

  ‘. . . and now you’ve left, there’s a big hole. Well, you have to live your life.’

  ‘I just don’t feel like . . . I mean, I feel I should . . .’

  ‘Take care of him? Of course. In Italy you would. There was an old lady in Rome that looked after her father until she died. She was seventy-nine, and the father was still alive. He’d worn her out! Her whole life devoted to him.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose they do that in Italy. Anyway, my dad’s not a tyrant.’

  ‘But he drinks too much.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not easy.’

  ‘No, it’s a bloody nightmare.’

  I sigh and look out the window.

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Natale con i suoi, pasqua con chi vuoi!’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I should be going home for Christmas instead of staying here.’

  ‘Are your family making a fuss?’

  ‘You are telling me.’

  I like it when Bianca uses phrases like that. It makes me smile.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Stay here!’ And her hands go out either side, palm upwards, as if to say ‘obviously!’

  ‘Oh, but Bianca!’ I shake my head and look out the window. ‘Am I supposed to go back there to look after him? Am I? Because mum’s gone? Because he doesn’t have a wife? Because he’s all alone? Well, I don’t want to!’ I say, hitting the table. ‘I don’t want to sit in that house with him making clinking noises in the Weetabix cupboard, when it’s bloody breakfast time, and slurring his words by lunch, and sitting slumped in that armchair next to the fire by teatime, and then making some big song and dance of opening a bottle of wine at exactly six o’clock as though that’s the first drink he’s had, and starting all over again. And there he is in that bloody armchair, his eyes all bleary, having revolting sentimental conversations about “Oh darling, do you love me?” when all I want to say is “No, I don’t, you self-indulgent bastard. How dare you ask me that!” But that’s not what I’m supposed to say, is it. I’m supposed to go home for Christmas and be a good daughter.’

  ‘Who says you’re supposed to? Just out of interest.’ says Bianca, not in the least perturbed by my outburst.

  ‘Everyone.’

  ‘Everyone like who?’

  ‘Magda probably.’

  ‘Who is Magda?’

  ‘Just a neighbour,’ I say, and I look out the window for a moment, because she isn’t just a neighbour. And I remember the smell of the woodstove and the steam rising off the wet clothes in the kitchen when we came back from the cowshed, and holding on to her trousers when we walked through the forest of cows.

  ‘A neighbour?’

  ‘No. More than that. She used to look after me a lot when I was small.’

  ‘So he has someone nearby?’

  ‘Well, they argued. They don’t talk now.’

  ‘That’s up to him,’ says Bianca, lifting up her hands. ‘But you think you should go home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because I feel so bloody sorry for him!’ And then I put my head into my hands and cry great monster sobs, and Bianca doesn’t say ‘there there,’ or put her arms round me and try to make me stop, she just lets me cry.

  ‘He didn’t use to be like this, you know, Bianca, he didn’t, even after mum died. He was strong and big and lovely, and noble. Now he’s, oh, he’s . . . he CRIES! He cries all drunk and sentimental and I want to hit him. That makes me horrible, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t want to go home for Christmas.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  So I don’t.

  Chapter 18

  I sit on the radiator and look out on London in January. It looks naked and drab. The clouds are grey and weigh down the sky.

  ‘Stop moping! I can’t stand you moping, if you mope you must go downstairs!’ says Bianca.

  ‘I’m not moping! Wasn’t it nice, our studio?’

  ‘There was no light!’ says Bianca.

  No. The studio didn’t have much light, that was the only thing; just a little frosted-glass window that opened about six inches, because it was on a metal hinge that squeaked when you opened it, so it only let in the sawdust-smelling air, and the sound of the saws, and the men shouting at each other as they stacked the wood on the lorries. But I got used to the darkness in a way. I had to make the colours glow.

  ‘You see! You are being nostalgic. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘I’m not, it’s just January, and I’ve got bloody Sergei as a tutor.’

  ‘Well, you have lots of work to show him! You used that studio twice as much as I did.’

>   The idea of showing Sergei the new paintings fills me with horror.

  ‘They might put some life into him!’ says Bianca, smiling.

  I laugh. Bianca’s name for Sergei is ‘the zombie’.

  ‘What he needs is a few minutes in the corridor! “AMEN! Praise be the Lord!” ’

  We both laugh. Next door to the studio we borrowed over the holiday the Church of the Cherubim and Seraphim also had their premises, and we could hear them doing exorcisms in the corridor. Bianca and I would listen with our eyes wide open and hands over our mouths, as the strange wobbly voice cried out: ‘Don’t marry her! she is a baaaad person!’

  ‘Praise be the Lord!’

  ‘She will take your money!’

  ‘Amen!’

  ‘Find another woman!’

  ‘Praise be the Lord!’

  They had about five thousand candles burning every time they did a ceremony, and wore long white robes and pork-pie hats like bath-caps. The children wore the same in miniature and sang songs which rocked the studio.

  We liked them being next door with all their incense and songs, speaking in tongues and spirit voices, and one day a big woman came to the door and asked me what I did, and I showed her my paintings, and she said in a beautiful low Nigerian voice, ‘Ah! Your pictures are full of spirits.’ I must have looked alarmed because she said, ‘Good spirits, good spirits’ and we both laughed.

  I was thrilled she liked them.

  ‘It just feels weird being back in an institution, that’s all. No freedom.’

  ‘Yes, with a technician upstairs to cut your stretchers,’ says Bianca, ‘and a shop in the canteen you can get everything half-price. Freedom is not free! It’s expensive! We didn’t pay for the studio, don’t forget.’

  We’d borrowed it from Bianca’s cousin’s ex-boyfriend, who went back to Italy for Christmas. It was behind the timber-merchant in Acre Lane so the air smelt of wood.

  ‘Well, we made some money! I liked those jobs!’ I say.

  Through Bianca’s network we’d found a studio and part-time work.

  That’s how we ended up spending a dark afternoon on a sunny day in a dungeon under the Coliseum, burning our fingers glue-gunning pearls on to Elizabethan dresses that the chorus complained about because their voices got lost in the ruffs.

  The next time, it was a tiny room up in a tower, stitching hooks and eyes on to pink-embroidered pale green tutus with lots of netting. That was at Covent Garden. I had to explain to Bianca that someone was playing a joke on the receptionist when her high voice came over the tannoy, ‘Could Mike Hunt come to reception, please.’