Learning to Dance (2 page)

Words came from him like bullets. Questions from the students flew around the room. He had a stack of their work on the table in front of him, and he picked out two or three and talked about less being more. ‘Never use two strokes of the pencil when one will do.’ By now, the students were almost at the end of their six-week taster and they all were hooked by what Jack Freeman was saying, all except for Judith Denman. She loved colour, consideration and then total immersion. Irony and satire had nothing to do with it. But she could not take her eyes off this lecturer. She had never seen anyone so … alive.

When the other students left at the end of the lecture she remained behind speechless, her eyes never leaving him. He flicked through the work on the desk and pulled out one of her watercolours.

‘Are you Judith Denman?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘Do you know my name?’

She cleared her throat. ‘Of course. Jack Freeman.’

‘Interesting. We share the “man”. But I am “Free” and you are “Den”. That says something to me. Do you see it, too?’ She nodded. She had understood everything he had said. And more.

He persisted. ‘I mean, do you see it rather than hear it?’ She nodded again, and he said, ‘Tell me what you see.’

‘I see two birds in a nest. And one flies. Up and away.’ She
almost choked with embarrassment, and thanked God that no one else was in the room.

‘I see that, too.’ He tapped a pencil on the pile of drawings. ‘How serious are you with your landscapes?’

‘Very. I love what I see out there.’ She shifted her eyes to the windows.

‘Do you want to produce them commercially? Postcards? Watercolours for tourists?’

‘Not really.’

‘That’s good. And you’re not interested in anything else – my stuff, for instance?’

‘Not really,’ she repeated.

‘OK.’ He sighed, replaced her painting and seemed to surrender to something. Then he lifted his head and looked at her as she had been looking at him all afternoon. It went on and on. At first she thought she might be going to faint; but she had never fainted, so wasn’t quite sure how it started. And then a calmness washed through her and she no longer tried to break away. He stayed where he was, hand on top of the stack of drawings, weight on his left foot, right leg slightly extended. He was nothing much to look at really; she realized that with surprise. Fair, just as she was, but his hair was like damp straw across his forehead and his eyes were a bit too solidly blue. His nose was too small for his long, thin mouth and – oh dear – his ears protruded.

He cleared his throat and she smiled slightly as some of the afternoon’s dynamism returned. She had not been mistaken, he was beautiful. Lit by fire.

He said, ‘I did not dare see you. But I must have perceived you somehow because I knew you were there. All the time. I could not pull out any of your work because it would have
meant looking at you. And I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to look away. Do you understand?’

She did not have to clear her throat; she had been looking at him all afternoon. All embarrassment had gone now. She simply nodded. They were both on some kind of baseline where truth was the only language possible. It was so – so absolutely
factual
. Not even romantic then. Just plain and frighteningly honest.

He said, suddenly humble, ‘I’m sorry. You had more courage.’

‘I had no other options.’ She tried to smile. She wanted to reassure him. She was overwhelmed by an enormous tenderness.

He drew in his right leg and stood away from the desk.

‘Let’s look at this sensibly. I am twenty-eight. You must be still a teenager. I am a freelance political cartoonist. Your adult life, your career, is still to come. We are experiencing a rather strong physical attraction. I think it might be a good thing if you left. Now.’

She clenched her hands; she did not know whether she was courageous or not. She was terrible about all dental treatment. And heights. No, she wasn’t courageous at all. But … she had been strong when her father had died; her mother had said often, ‘I couldn’t do this without you, Jude.’ Anyway, now, at this moment, she had no choice because her legs would not move. She could not leave the lecture room. Not yet, anyway.

This time she did clear her throat before she spoke.

‘It’s not only physical attraction. You know that. Because of the birds in the nest. You said you saw the same thing.’

‘No, I didn’t see the same thing.’

‘You said you did.’

‘I saw two badgers in a sett. One of them stayed, one of them left.’

There was a pause; the almost-rhyme had been unintentional, their connected gaze changed slightly, and then they both started to laugh. They walked towards each other and reached out. His hands were warm on hers; rough, too. He was much more a badger than a bird.

He shook both her hands, and gradually they stopped laughing. She knew he was going to tell her to go away and ring him in three years’ time. She held on to his hands fiercely. She knew this had to happen. And then he knew it, too. He sighed.

‘So … you want a den. And I want to fly. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. Anyway, let’s see how it goes. I’m going to Paris tomorrow. New exhibition on the Champs-Elysée, lots of interesting things. How would you feel about coming with me?’

She wanted to go, but she said nothing and went on looking at him. He shook her hands again, knowing.

‘Fine, I’ll see to your ticket now and pick you up at seven thirty tomorrow morning. We’ll fly together.’

He turned her around, put his hands on her shoulders and propelled her to the door. He did not ask her anything about her circumstances, and she asked him nothing about his. Just before the door closed between them she turned and said, ‘I live at forty-seven Meadow Road.’

‘Right. If you change your mind, don’t answer my knock.’

Her mother was appalled. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure,’ she intoned like her mother before her. Judith could tell that – beneath the shocked surprise – she was intrigued.

All through their evening meal Eunice Denman voiced
rhetorical questions and answered them herself with words like ‘unwise’ and ‘foolhardy’. Then she changed tack slightly and said that if someone was paying for him to lecture at the art school then he must have some standing, which of course he couldn’t afford to jeopardize with such an obvious seduction scenario.

Judith said nothing about his brief ‘let’s see how it goes’. Instead she reiterated her first argument: that he obviously thought the exhibition at such a prestigious gallery on the Champs-Elysée would be well worth her seeing. She began to believe it herself. He hadn’t been very complimentary about her watercolour, but now she said, ‘Perhaps he really thinks I’ve got something, Ma. Dad always used to say I was a natural-born painter—’

‘He said you were a natural-born woman, Jude. There was a song around at the time. Dad knew nothing at all about painting.’

Judith tightened her mouth with disappointment. Yes, that was what Dad had said; typically kitsch. She had loved him saying it, it had made her feel confident. It was the reason she had left off the gripper-knickers that Joyce Belling had said held in stomachs better than anything. She had been pathetic. Just pathetic.

She thought of Dad and his spurious charm, and said suddenly, ‘Actually, Mr Freeman reminds me of Dad. How strange. He’s not a bit like him really, no compliments – can’t imagine him bringing me any flowers like Dad did with you. But there’s just something.’

‘A dozen red roses, every day for a month. Until I said I’d go out with him.’ Mum’s eyes were watering and her chin was trembling.

Judith said quickly, ‘One of the things Dad used to say was
about seizing opportunities. I think I should seize this one, Ma. I really do.’

There was a sniff, then a scrabbling up the cardigan sleeve for a handkerchief, then a mixture of sniffs and blows, and eventually Eunice sighed deeply and acknowledged it might be silly for Judith to miss ‘an outing with her teacher’.

So, on the basis of it being a school trip, Judith set her alarm for six thirty the next morning, packed the knapsack she had taken to guide camp five years ago, and was waiting by the gate at seven twenty. She never doubted he would turn up. She never ever doubted his wholehearted love for her; he felt as she felt. There were no options. Her mother stayed by the front door, as her dressing gown was not suitable for public viewing. She kept calling Judith back for yet another piece of advice, but when the Armstrong Siddeley appeared at the mouth of their cul-de-sac she closed the door to a mere crack and peered through it with one eye. She did not notice the rust, nor the fact that the rear of the car appeared to be used as a litter bin.

Judith noticed, but rather liked it. Even more she liked the way Jack shot from the driver’s seat, his face split by an enormous grin, grabbed her knapsack and hurled it in with the rest of the stuff, before handing her into the slippery polished seat as if she were royalty.

He settled himself next to her, did a noisy three-point turn, and they were on their way. She remembered very well what he had said.

‘My God, this is great. Never thought you’d come, of course. Never thought I’d go crazy for a girl like you – blonde bombshell. I don’t know how I’ll wait till we get to the hotel.’

She had suddenly felt the smallest affront. She translated the ‘blonde bombshell’ into ‘dumb blonde’ and saw them
scurrying up a winding staircase in a rather seedy hotel in Montmartre. But the hotel was not far from the Tuileries, and only a walk from the gallery on the Champs-Elysée, and they had separate rooms, but with only a low rail between the wonderful wrought-iron balconies. And when he clambered over the railing he was suddenly diffident.

He said, ‘I should know how to go about this, Judith. I’m almost ten years older than you, and you’re so – so blessedly ordinary. Not edgy and clever-clever. You really are the nesting type, and here I am dragging you on one of my flights!’

And all doubts left her. She spoke calmly. ‘But now, at this moment, we are in my nest. And you are with me. If you weren’t, I would be terrified. When my father died he seemed to take away … so much. And you are giving it back!’

It was simple, direct. Afterwards he had cried and she had not. She remembered the passion, yes. But more she remembered the warmth and total safety of being with him.

He had always been with her. Through the birth of the twins … when Toby’s tonsillitis had proved to be meningitis … when Matt had won a scholarship to the grammar school and Toby had not … and then, when Jack’s brother in Australia had offered the boys ‘a kind of apprenticeship’ with his air-delivery service, Jack had gone with them to Perth to investigate the whole idea and had returned full of enthusiasm but without the boys.

That had been hard. She had pretended it was better that way, but she had felt she was making excuses for him. They had gone out with return tickets and should have come back to be hugged and instructed on every detail of life in the outback – she had read it up in the two weeks they had actually experienced it. And when he had grinned and said, ‘It’s one
way of getting you to fly the nest, Jude! I’ve said we’ll go and see them in the autumn,’ she had managed a little smile and a nod. But somehow the safety net had suddenly revealed a small hole.

Jack was twelve years younger than Len. Their parents had died in a road accident when Jack was six and his brother was eighteen. Len had stepped into his father’s shoes; he had already been well into the third year of his engineering apprenticeship. With the help of his mother’s best friend he had provided everything Jack had needed, and had always recognized his young brother’s talent and fostered it carefully.

And then, when Jack was thoroughly enjoying his own training in a local newspaper group, Len took over the job of servicing a group of private helicopters stabled at Filton Airfield. One of the helicopters belonged to William Whortley, the owner of a prestigious weekly newspaper. Len labelled him ‘old-school-tie’ and found him easy-going and laid-back. One day, they shared sandwiches over the wonderfully intricate engine, which Len had winched on to the wide inspection bench. William Whortley seemed to understand Len’s ‘guided tour’. At the end of it he nodded.

‘You know, Freeman, what really interests me is that this is one of the many places where art and science meet. It’s the sheer precision, I think.’

Len was doubtful. ‘Yes … I know what you mean. Anything that is out of place or alignment would spoil it as a work of art. But also – as an engine – it might still work. The only trouble is, if it packs up mid-flight you lose lives.’

‘And a wrong line in a painting would not lose lives? Ah. I wonder. No statistics for it, but I think it could happen. I’ve seen one wrong line wreck the painter who made it.’ He
peered down into the neatly packed cogs and levers. ‘I still think this is a work of art. There’s a sculptor I know of who works in small metal objects – intertwining angles all interdependent and evolving from a single cube.’ He looked up, smiling. ‘I reckon you’re an artist! Can’t remember the chap’s name, but he could easily have made this!’

Len laughed. ‘You should see some of my brother’s stuff – he’s the artist.’

The discussion went on amiably, and the next day Mr Whortley came again and brought with him the previous evening’s
Bristol News
. ‘Is this your brother’s work?’ he asked immediately.

When Len nodded cautiously, ready to defend Jack’s cartoon as a work of art, Mr Whortley said directly, ‘Would he consider coming to work for me?’

So, at the age of twenty-four, Jack had joined the staff of the
Magnet
, and Len, suddenly free, had gone to Australia and started a private rescue company with one helicopter and an emergency medical team. Twenty-three years later he had offered jobs to his two young nephews.

Jack had been over the moon. Judith had shown her surprise, and he had said straightly, ‘They don’t know what they want to do – all these odd jobs in the city are not taking them anywhere. Len is offering something special here, Jude. The boys will see it as an adventure – they’ll love it – well, they will soon tell us if they don’t! And we can visit them.’ He took her hand. ‘Darling, do you realize I am almost fifty?’ He enunciated disbelievingly, ‘Fifty years old, Jude!’