Schooling (16 page)

53

The way it’s constructed, Catrine. Up from earth, not down from heaven, church or non. We’re after truth, remember. See this, we may be in for an early spring. In this pale yellow, in those leaves. The crocus I saw on the way home yester—why are you laughing?

Crocus. Sounds so dainty.

I’m planning to undo all that Miss Miss
Devon
. . . spitting . . . Has wreaked. So you can stop reveling . . . lifting his leg to brush out a pebble from the step . . . In mediocrity. In plebeian ideas of daintiness and the expectations of what teachers should speak of, crocuses or or anvils. When I ask what color’s this and you say Green, don’t laugh that’s exactly how you said it, Green, well I put it to you, what about loden? What about teal or jonquil? Where the hell’s barium? And what of our friends turquoise and celadon? Are you planning to exclude them from the garden party? . . . Gilbert wipes color from his brush . . . I beg of you, do not get mired in dull dull Green. Green is a downward slope to nowhere . . . he begins to replace the handkerchief in his pocket.

There’s paint on that.

Gilbert folds the handkerchief, places it between them on the step.

What does plebeian mean? . . . blowing on her fingers, winter still, crocuses or non.

What now?

You said I had plebeian ideas.

Nonsense. Perhaps I said there was a danger of forming them, when listening to the likes of a Miss Devon. Common, it means common. Originating from the common people of Rome . . . he holds out his hand for the cutting board which serves as her easel . . . Let’s go inside Harrington.

He sets off down the path checking for her over his shoulder shaking the doctor’s bag to settle their art supplies . . . Because art needs housecalls . . . holding it up pointing to the stickers, CND, SWS . . . Don’t tell, they’ll call me Marxist. I think I told you about falling into this river.

Yes, yes he’s said it all before.

A middle-class teenager has ideas about universities, punting and the like. Not easy to push a boat with a pole . . . over a weedy bridge . . . I won’t mention Monet as we cross this, I refuse to be ridiculed by a twelve—

Thirteen—

Yes, year old. Punchinello’s subtle insults . . . prissily . . . I admire crocuses—

That’s not my voice.

Almost out and out calling me sentimental. So I think I’ve been insulted enough for one day.

He insults himself.

I’m sure I’m complicit, now look up.

They have come to the end of the riverbank the end of their jaunt the end of Gilbert’s rabbiting as Father would say. Father would have no patience. Might I trouble you, friend, for more matter, less art.

Gilbert sets the doctor’s case down at his feet, working out the groove left in his palm. Noticing that she watches him, he mouths
up
dropping his hand to point.

And there it is, a green no, luteous dome in the sky. Here’s his sentimentality his mushiness curled up over the trees and Oxbow chimneys. Harrington. The weather has turned, sun back under the roof of clouds, sky forming a low dome above. Gilbert telling her about the roof, burbling the chemistry of rain. Why it makes copper go this shade of. Jade. Standing next to her no not in tweed today half holiday Wednesday after all so wearing his duffel light around him gold because a chemistry teacher in a grey town turns wool that color. He shifts, she looks back to the roof. Why bother with copper if it just turns. Turns. That color.

Into the echo of Harrington’s marble entranceway where a desk encircles a knotty tree. White paint in her hair. Gilbert pulls her past the bald man surveying her over bifocals, Gilbert nodding
this is usual,
thirteen-year-old girls with white caked hair in your marble library
then pointing up again . . . Fresco.

Painted in the dome, angels and deer. A bearded man . . . God?

St. Francis. Here’s his wife, Lady poverty.

Around the desk and man, with his bag under arm, his hand on her shoulder, Gilbert leads her up a flight of stairs. Into a dingy common room of burn-dotted armchairs. He stops in a smoky plebeian corner to buy them coffee from a machine.

Always say a prayer for these, they can be quite vicious. One exploded on me in a bus station once . . . he buys a penguin too . . . Does chocolate count as sweets which I know you don’t eat?

No . . . she tells him . . . Those are more like cookies . . . knowing this will amuse him which it does smiling as he rattles the knob for a second biscuit.

Handing her the cup and . . . Watch it that’s hot, red or blue?

Blue . . . penguin he leads them back out to the corridor . . . It’s illegal to take refreshments from the lounge so hurry . . . past doorways of smoked glass apologetic . . . I revert to student behavior whenever I return.

Gilbert opens an unmarked door to a small room overlooking the entrance. A balcony. Or is it a mezzanine is it a shelf is it a ledge. Potted ferns on either end of a glossy bench. She sits down. Far below, the serious man belted by his desk. Head, a portable dome.

Gilbert sets his coffee on the bench next to her . . . Regarding symmetry, the line of the doorway . . . his hands dart as they assign . . . Those windows, the ornate frame of that door. See the way this window behaves? Let’s discuss measure. Let’s learn about perspective. Let’s discover how to translate what you see instead of what you know.

I’m not very good at perspective.

Stooping to his doctor’s bag from paying art a housecall the white domed light bleaching his face . . . Yes . . . a certain press to his lips . . . Quite.

Caught on the balcony well above the serious round desk but some ways below St. Francis with his trouble & strife Gilbert pulling out protractors and pencils in a manner which suggests humming although he is not his concentrated air oblivious to her and her coffee sipping her taking care not to let blouse or mouth stain brown her wanting in an idle way to throw something over the edge to watch its descent to measure speed distance velocity she could stay here like this with Gilbert moving so surely next to her in his pullover a bitter smell to him he has no classes to teach so no baths to take on Wednesdays could stay like this for some time with him about to give her some perspective which she hasn’t yet decided if she really wants.

They sit together, looking down. Cutting board and easel propped side by side against the balustrade. Ready to sketch. Gilbert shows her how to break perception into boxes. Draws a grid on her paper says This might seem boring but you’ve no idea how useful it will be in the long run.

And he smiles down at her. Gilbert has his own grids the lines bracketing his mouth eyebrows a horizon the axis of nose around which his whole face can turn and sometimes her stomach flips around it too. I’m going to draw the ceiling she says lying back on the bench to face the dome so that when the door swings open when Gilbert flicks around with a surprised
hello
she has a very strange perspective an askew you could say perspective of the door angled away the man’s body much larger at the bottom than the top a matter of what one knows versus what one sees a matter of comparing the body atilt in the doorway beyond her bent knees and tented skirt to the doorway itself framing him.

Struggling up, there’s no way to delicately drape her skirt clutching her cutting board to her chest knowing even as she’s doing it that her blouse will become imprinted with his soft horizons.

Mr. Gilbert. Evans? . . . Mr. Betts, hair frowsy, as if they’ve called him and he came running . . . Good heavens.

Patrick . . . Gilbert puts down his drawing paper a strained smile a strain to the way he puts the notebook down on the bench between them marking a divider a boundary a border she is right the way over there I, on the other hand, am here. In his
Patrick
a sort of startled amused lift to his eyebrows a standing a curl to his hands dropped to his sides. She is watching him not Mr. Betts but following Gilbert’s lead she gets up too stooping to collect their penguin foil and coffee cups standing helplessly not knowing how to not draw attention to their rule-breaking litter.

Well this is a coincidence. Advanced tutorials, is it?

Of an artistic nature, Mr. Betts, rather than a scientific one.

An artistic nature . . . Betts takes in Mr. Gilbert from the shoes up . . . I’m confused.

I was showing Evans the structure of Harrington here. Perhaps you recall from your own University days, Patrick, how beautifully this building exemplifies certain notions of architecture, form, construction. Yes hum so I was showing Evans, who has taken some interest in technical drawing, how to site along an axis, etc. Formulate theories of plane—

Isn’t Technical Drawing usually a Fourth form subject?

Well yes. Technically . . . a strange whinny . . . Still if we were always to follow the school’s pace one wouldn’t know who ran the country until one had reached the Lower Sixth. Studied politics. Difficult to shut out the outside world. It always intrudes . . . Gilbert watches his toe touch a leg of the bench . . . I find.

The outside world, that’s true enough.

Silently, Gilbert raises his eyes to the intrusion in the doorway.

Well, what a fun day you’re having. And you are altruistic as always, Mr. Gilbert. Not many would give their time on a day off.

That’s why we teach, isn’t it Patrick, to give of ourselves?

So it is, Mr. Gilbert
obscure latin
as they say.

And you Mr.—

I was down in the green room. Harrington has a marvelously well-preserved collection of rare moths.

So you’re a weekend lepidopterist?

Doesn’t that sound rude . . . Betts snickers . . . No, more of an amateur botanist. I was sent up to speak to . . . groping for the name in his hair . . . A Mr. Powell. Any idea? Records room or some such. I’m a bit lost.

Down on the left two doors. Actually it’s marked Records.

Well I shouldn’t have any trouble then. I look forward to seeing the results of a day spent in such academic vein . . . Betts turns in the doorway . . . What fun . . . he says it to Gilbert rather than to her in fact the two of them have not looked once at her standing by the balustrade litter in hand.

The men stand motionless, staring. Then Betts laughs abruptly . . . Off I go . . . he leaves with a slam.

Slowly slowly Gilbert sits down on the bench staring at the just shut door his shoulders round his back to her. She sets their coffee cups down, plants them in the potted fern. Keeping the foil to squeeze into a ball.

I flashed him.

What’s that?

Mr. Betts. My skirt was kind of up—the way I was sitting and—

I see.

Squeezing squeezing, the foil scoring her palm . . . He already thinks I’m pornographic.

Does he? . . . Gilbert trails his hand along the bench beside him, no doubt measuring the fit of door to frame, factoring the ingress degree of cold air. Finally he swivels one hundred and eighty degrees to face her. And the lines of the background drop away.

Is that grid helping? I could show you the way tangents work. Degrees of distortion. It might help. Then again it might just confuse you.

Gilbert leans forward leaning not his drawing paper but chin on hands against the railing. She sits next to him foil in a ball leans her elbows looks where he does. Below them a woman at the desk, terrier snuffling her ankles, hectors
There’s never been any trouble about it before. Are you new? Where did you come from?

She wants to bring her dog into the library.

Yes.

That man won’t let her.

No. How insignificant things can seem, hum . . . Gilbert turns to look at her, resting his cheek on his hand . . . From a height.

Facing him, her face pressed against her own hands, the perspective is mostly elbow, sleeve, fingers. Then Gilbert. Sharp-nosed. Eyes wide, pupils making small shuttering movements. Beyond Gilbert, the white walls of Harrington. Betts, he wouldn’t look at her disarrayed across the bench. First photographs, now this.

Mr. Gilbert, are you allowed to sign me out on half days?

Of course . . . sitting up . . . What’s on your front?

She pulls at her shirt . . . Your grid.

For some reason her nose is running. And he pulls out his handkerchief but as she is blowing they realize it is the one with paint so he has to root through his doctor’s bag to find the antidote another handkerchief to wet and take the paint off her nose. Finally it appears Gilbert has forgotten about Betts bursting in on them on their Wednesday on their balcony. Finally they are alone again even the woman with her dog and the librarian’s agitated baldness remain far below as much a fresco as the deer above just Gilbert and her Gilbert saying, Even some on your eyelash, concentrating on the motes thereon although that paint has been there the entire time to remind her out the corner of one eye that she is the kind of girl who gets things all over herself.

You mustn’t let Mr. Betts disturb you. After all, nothing in the school rules forbids a master taking a pupil out drawing or even for tea in his or her home.

I’ve never read anything like that.

Especially a foreign student who cannot visit his or her parents as often as the others, a pupil such as that risks feeling homesick, lonely. Surely it’s only charitable to ensure that a foreign student won’t feel isolated in our country. In fact I almost think I’ve seen something in the guidelines encouraging that sort of thoughtfulness among the staff.

When I asked if you felt sorry for me, you said no.

And I meant no . . . Gilbert pulls back resting his elbows on the railing . . . I suppose you imagine I have endless amounts of spare time. That I’m bringing Joyce Tebazalwa off to paint the old bridge by the river, owning up to a sentimental affection for Courbet. Or that Minter and I discuss symmetry and angles in eighteenth-century buildings over tea. Is that what you think?

There is nothing really to say to that but at least she can know next time Sophie says He’s like that to everyone can say, No he’s not like that to everyone, I’m different. Not that she would of course. Not that she would say that. Not that it’s in the school rules not to say that, it’s just not the kind of thing you say.