A Sculptor's Gift (part 3)
5
After an hour, I am back in the square. I am standing at the edge and looking in at the crowd - there must be at least sixty here tonight. After Hettie’s attempt at finding a buyer for my work, I'm suspicious of anyone liking my sculpture: of course, some of them are demonstrating against the Mayor, but I'm still wary of them.
Yes, I should be grateful. I wanted fame and here it is, but all I can see at the moment is a flock of sheep huddled around what I now realise is an embarrassingly random pile of junk. Is this what ‘celebrity’ is? Not so much one’s own stature growing but considering others’ to be diminished? I also now realise the artistic merit (or otherwise) of the sculpture is immaterial, just as the superstructure of a ship is pretty irrelevant if you are a barnacle simply looking for somewhere to glue your parasitic little arse. Mind, I think the ‘Parasitic Little Arse’ bit is probably more about me than the people in the square.
“Ok, you lot... You’ve had your fun, now just bugger off.”
Oh, to have the bottle to say that.
Hettie is standing in the middle of it all, mobile in hand and looking round as she orchestrates this ongoing event. She is the reason my sculpture has become a focal point, is gaining in value by the minute; she is the reason the national press is here but, no, I don't want to talk to them - in fact, I don't want to talk to anyone.
At best the crowd is needy and pathetic, at worst they all want a part of me. They've become a personal intrusion and what makes it all the more annoying is that it's my fault. I do what I always do in situations such as this and escape to the stream.
The stream is a muddy excuse of a trickle that runs past the land where my beloved factory chimneys are, and it contains a world that only I know about. Under the rippling water is a magical kingdom, one even more mysterious than the realm of pottery castle ruins and treasure chests that my parents allowed in the fish tank when I was little. But now I can see the glow from the square as well and, far from being comforting, it is pollutant, unwelcome. It is at this moment I am reminded of a piece in my memoirs so potent to me that it needs no paper prompt:
As a child, my gaze would return to the kingdom in the stream. Imagining an underwater city wasn't hard and my mind would walk between, say, a submerged brick (now many times my size) and a shopping trolley looming in my hallucination like the steelwork of an enormous office block, the windows long gone.
I was the viewer, happy just to look through the screen of the water. One day, though, I broke the picture beneath the sluggish stream with my hand to retrieve the bowl of a clay pipe - it was Victorian, bore the royal coat of arms and had probably been issued to a soldier who’d sworn allegiance to a queen far away in London, a mythical woman neither more nor less real to him than my fantasy kingdom at the bottom of the brook was to me.
While there at the stream, I would peer through the dark and look up at the derelict factory buildings and chimneys stood patiently against the waking dawn, giants attending like lumbering acolytes and ready, at one word from me, to trample whomever, whatever I wished. They were once in a chain of so many factories that I imagined a ring of chimney smoke around the world as they strode across the Empire…
…And I knew, even then, that The Past is a paint that never washes out completely; no, it gradually just wears away with the years.
My sculpture, too, contains sacred pieces that hail from The Past - nineteenth century cast iron brackets, an ornate gate from a churchyard, a metal doorstop shaped like Prince Albert. There is, however, part of me that wants to abandon the entire piece - indeed, part of me wants to abandon the whole event. My original aim was to attract attention, to provide a talking point, but now I have achieved my goal I would like my sculpture to be a private place.
Fat chance of that. Examining the situation, it would appear that I haven't really thought it through at all.
"Hello."
The voice is Charlotte's. I am thrown, momentarily, by someone else's presence - this is my Secret-Abandoned-Factory-Place, not hers. It is in fact an invasion of the highest order, but then I realise she's also annoyed.
"Charlotte, this place is my discovery." She looks at me, puzzled.
"Yeah, right." Now she is walking over to my secret shed, the tall building where I made my sculpture.
Except she isn't. Charlotte beckons me to follow her to another building entirely. Inside, I notice the roof in Charlotte’s shed is lower but in better condition, more complete (and drier) than the hovel I have commandeered for myself. What's more, the materials have fared well, including a dozen sheets of plywood stacked in a corner. She points at them.
“Found them in here.”
And to think I didn't even look in here because it was too small.
Bending down, Charlotte places a shoebox on the cracked and moss-patinated floor and opens it. She removes a pencil which she then holds between her teeth as she lifts out one of her little card sculptures. Holding her model in one hand and the pencil in the other, Charlotte copies one of its facets onto a sheet of plywood.
"I want to cut it out." Now she is smiling, obviously taking my impassive lack of objection as vaguely hopeful. Actually, she is playing the same game I played with the Mayor, treating it all as a done deal to make me comply - I know this trick though, and it won't work. Charlotte's look turns pleading, beguiling, with her head cocked to one side and those big eyes looking up at me.
"Pretty please."
Oh, bloody hell.
"Um… Okay." I sigh and raise my finger, beckoning her to follow me across a derelict factory yard strewn with redundant machinery. I show her my workspace, a shed patched up with corrugated iron and truck tarpaulin. I crank up a generator, turn a key in a metal box by the light switch and Charlotte gasps at the live power sockets and the red indicator lights looking clean against the mouldy, peeling surface of the concrete block walls. The whole thing has turned into a Gothic drama where I am Doctor Frankenstein in his lab, Charlotte is the beautiful, wan heroine of a silent movie and the monster sculpture has pissed off and is now creating a bit of a stir all on its own.
"I did it, the power supply. Found this generator in a shed by the gate."
Accompanying a further puerile narrative with melodramatic gestures, I suddenly realize that I am not cut out for heroic yarns and sound ridiculous. It is at this point that Charlotte, after initial concern, laughs.
There, that's proof she thinks I’m a twat…
…Or that she cares about me (and she finds me funny). Emboldened, I swagger across the floor and make a grandiose flourish in the air at the bench and the stool, the tools and the appliances, the welding gear and the piles of scrap metal.
It is now the day after I showed Charlotte my workshop. I knew Charlotte and I should have been quieter and now someone has been and bulldozed my workshop. What's more, someone is there the morning after, fifty metres inside orange and white barrier tape around the site and that someone has a bright yellow machine with which he is crushing my shed and flattening anything higher than half a metre.
6
A long day of waiting has passed and it's night-time again: it is as much by feel as by sight that I return and gather the remains of my tools from the wreckage. It would be foolhardy to draw attention to Charlotte's shed, so I pile my belongings behind the next one along. I also manage to drag the generator (in a protective cage so still working) to Charlotte's building. Hearing a noise,I pocket my torch and lie low - it's the time when the security guard with the shaven head and the German Shepherd gets back from patrolling the builder's merchant on the other side of the road. He lifts his shiny head and bays at the night.
"Who's there? That you, poof? Come back to knock up another pile of shit? We found where you did it and flattened it so not so clever now, eh? Gotcha!" The man marches in another direction and shouts at the night again. "Gotcha!" Striding off in the opposite direction again, he bellows even louder, this time as a mocking chant. "GOTCHA GOTCHA WE FUCKIN' GOTCHA!" He looks like he has a birthmark on his head, but I have seen him in the pub by the square and it is a map of Britain. The England part is filled with the colour of his Chinese-owned football team, complete with the name of their Argentinean striker and the sponsor's logo of French bank Neo Finance Systems Inc. He carries on shouting into the dark.
"I'm a welder. Did you know that? I really can work metal, except my job went to the Polish, didn't it? Or was it the Indians, the Africans, the Irish... Or, perhaps it was the Chinese? Meanwhile, here you are pissing about while I'm walking this bleeding mutt at one in the morning when I should be home with a woman which, for your information, is nothing like when you're at home with a bloke."
This man is demonstrating his masculinity. I feel sorry for him (even now) because he probably feels he has lost the right to proclaim it at home, to be seen as the saviour of his household, to be looked up to as the one who provides.
"If it wasn't for people like me skulking around, you wouldn't even have this job!" Well, that was the immature, smart-arse remark I would have come out with once, but right now it would be a cruel battle cry to inflict on a fellow struggler. I even want to go over and embrace him, to tell him that he would find great solace in Art but I’m not sure he’d be terribly receptive to the notion.
So I decide against it.
I don't lay the cable to Charlotte's shed in a straight line; no, that would be too noticeable. I bury it, finish covering it up and scrape my boots over the ground so that the line of freshly disturbed, damp gravel is not too obvious.
I cannot be so blatant now, so I wire in a delicate little electric jigsaw. My band-saw would cut through the plywood quicker, but the jigsaw is much quieter, cuts complex shapes and gives a cleaner line. Anyway, rebuilding the band-saw would mean waiting for spare parts and that could take weeks. There is enough of my corrugated iron and tarpaulin still intact to make one end of Charlotte's shed even more water-resistant, but that will have to wait. I drape a piece of plastic over the newly-fitted saw and power supply and take pictures, proof - despite what might happen to the building - of my devotion to Charlotte.
Then home, to bed.
I stare at my favourite part of the headboard, a darker patch in the shape of a teddy bear - darker because it was obscured for years from sunlight by a sticker from a Sugar Bear cereal box. I close my eyes and remember the exciting day when, my mother having sent off the Sugar Bear coupons, I would run down stairs each morning to inspect the front door mat for a package from the Sugar Bear, my spoon taking two excruciatingly long weeks to arrive. It was worth it though, especially as it was from the bear himself – I knew it was from him because he had typed a letter to me and signed it at the bottom with a rubber stamp.
7
I go to the town square in the early morning and push past the large crowd that now seems to be constantly around my sculpture. Seeking another avenue for self-advertisement, the Mayor has adopted the bread-and-circuses approach, the permanent throng being a ready audience for those who require one. I don't need to be there any more as I now know it isn't about me and nor is it about my sculpture. No, we just turned out to be minor cogs in something else and for that I am grateful.
The event is not plain sailing and, after a concert staged on the back of a truck, there is an 'atmosphere' involving some orange-robed monks and a local rock band. The band has come to collect the drum-kit and other equipment that the monks took hostage as a protest about the noise - not for their own sakes, apparently, but for the benefit of all those nearby who were finding it hard to sleep.
What really rattles the band is that their set produced minimal attention from the gathered throng in the square, whereas the monks sitting on the stage and chanting have kept the audience rapt.
I have arranged to meet Charlotte there. She - all of a sudden and for no obvious reason - wants to tell me about her past and she tries to attract my attention as the monks chant on the stage. This doesn't annoy me as it means she wants to share intimate details with me. It means that this beautiful young woman just wants to be with me and that is exciting.
"You know nothing about me. I grew up in Rome where white marble, stained glass -"
"Is that why you work the way you do, all that white paper and coloured sweet wrappers?" Charlotte looks at me patiently but my stilted, know-it-all interruption has thrown her. "Sorry, carry on."
"It doesn't matter." She sees my guilty look. "No, it really doesn't. I only felt I had to fill the silence because I'm not used to talking to... To anyone."
"Neither am I, if I can possibly help it." Okay, that came out really wrong. Fortunately, Charlotte catches my smile – and my meaning - and laughs.
"In that case, let's just enjoy the moment!"
Her clothes catch the coloured dawn light and the random tones of threadbare garments are redeemed by the unifying tint of the early sun. In the warm red glow, the orange of the monks' robes is intensified to the point of hysteria, a contrast to the savants' calm demeanour. They leave the stage and file past us, the musk of incense wafting from the coarse, hand-woven fabric around their smooth brown shoulders. They are timeless, yet the one in front has immaculate, plastic-framed glasses and an inoculation mark on his arm, incongruities that certify him as this century's property.
Charlotte's gaze follows them as they file through the crowd and then it alights on the stubble on my face. The scrubby beginnings of a beard bother her and she frowns as she gently presses the prickles with her fingers.
Bloody hell - she is touching me.
This is the moment I have dreamt of, but her delicate fingers are the very thing that alerts me to the fact that I am grotty, unprepared for the few seconds I am to be explored by her perfectly-formed hand. The monks are completely smooth and that makes my stubble appear ill-disciplined, half-hearted. In short, I am unfinished clay and Charlotte, even in her random hand-me-downs, is a neat, methodical engraving completed with a skilled, thorough hand, each parallel line stopping precisely at the border. Both of us are like the art we do; I heave, I improvise, I bash, dent and patinate. Charlotte plans, she cuts with precision, she arranges her materials neatly in the order she will use them. What would it be like if we collaborated?
A woman in a cream trouser suit and wide fedora hat of exactly the same shade is moving slowly, stately through the crowd. Her dark burgundy bob is glossy and boldly complements the pale face as still as marble under the wide brim. Nothing about this woman is obvious: there is no red lipstick or blusher but a hint of bronze on her delicate mouth and eyelids; no diamonds but an Egyptian scarab, turquoise, has been positioned with utmost care on her lapel.
She moves at a measured pace that suggests not so much ennui but more that she won't be rushed. She has room to do so in comfort, not because she has been granted space but because it is merely hers as a given: she is that kind of person and has a presence that doesn't, probably to the disappointment of the minion in front of her, rely on him for a clear passage. No, she does not have to jostle - she can turn her refined, aquiline profile with ease to pity the homeless and she can twist her slim, elegant body to catch a glimpse of the food stalls, her expression conveying the notion that one slight glance is all they will ever deserve.
The woman is prodding the rubbish with a tightly rolled silk umbrella and examining it carefully with the curiosity of an astronaut poking at a specimen on a strange planet. She looks around and catches sight of my sculpture, gasping suddenly and yet instantly recovering her composure, her kid glove moving languidly through the air and arriving, finally, at the rose-gold pin through her silk cravat. Seeing me, she nods ever so slightly in a vague semblance of recognition. Her assistant comes over to converse with me and calls out as he approaches.
"When can you deliver it?" I have to confess that I am somewhat mystified by this opening move.
"Pardon?"
"The sculpture. When are you able to install it in the grounds?"
"The grounds?" I can see this reply doesn't really help and the assistant is getting irritated now.
Almost as irritated as me.
"But", I blurt out, "it isn't for sale!"
"You do not appear to understand; as her ladyship has already bought it… Your agent…" The grey-suited man studies my blank expression. "But that woman representing you -"
"I don't have a woman representing me. Now, if you will excuse -" I change my tack midcourse: of course - Hettie. Anyway I am curious, not only regarding what has been decided in my absence but also, bizarrely, whether I myself actually agreed to anything or not. "To whom did you speak?"
"Oh," interrupts the woman, speaking at last and I fondly imagine the pause is to savour the laboured correctness of my ‘to whom’. I bet she’s expecting me to say ‘who did you speak to’ - except, of course, she wouldn’t have been expecting it unless she was telepathic.
Another lengthy pause. The woman looks around the square again and takes in the hotdog stand with a minute quiver of revulsion before acknowledging my presence and speaking.
"My assistant spoke to... A woman." She looks in my vague direction and tilts her head as she removes her amber cigarette holder to blow smoke at the orange sky. "Some... Some... Woman or other." The lady looks into my eye; it appears to be an accidental connection, but then she holds my gaze as if hiding beneath the broad brim of her fedora allows her to momentarily drop her haughty disguise like an off-duty queen and crack the faintest sliver of a smile.
An hour later, Charlotte and I are with the woman in her conservatory. Despite our suspicions about this strange person and her people, the thirty minute ride into the countryside was welcome after the jumble of noise in the town square, and anyway there was plenty in the limousine to keep us amused such as a hamper of food and a walnut and silver-mounted chiller with booze and sparkling water.
The chauffeur had sat impassive in his grey, high collared uniform and was as solid as concrete, not even twitching as a champagne cork hit the plate glass divide between his dignified silence and our immaturity. He was even still as we whooped and bent down to slurp up the rushing bubbles that had spilled onto the cream leather seats under our stained, hand-me-down trousers. We had great fun and it was with no small disappointment that we fall out of the large black car onto a vast gravel drive in front of an even vaster late eighteenth century house.
And are we concerned as we followed a young assistant through passages lined with oak paneling and the fragrance of beeswax and turpentine polish? Nicky, said assistant sporting cheeky grin, seems to have survived okay, with no evidence of teeth-pulling for the heinous crime of chewing gum, no obvious scouring of her mouth for contravening arcane bylaws regarding lurid lipstick - nor indeed the shaving of her head for sporting such a brash shade of hair dye. Pausing at a large glass wall supported by tall cast iron columns topped with metal palm leaves, Nicky has turned a pair of mascara-caked eyes our way and raises them to the ceiling.
But being pissed out of our heads we hardly register.
"I don't quite know how her ladyship sticks this bit," opines Nicky. "Even for a minute. Talk about sweaty... Best of luck!" Waggling a few ringed fingers at us, Nicky giggles, turns and totters back in the direction of the office where she first received us.
Sitting in a rattan chair, I find the palms and the jungle atmosphere of the lady's hot house prod a desire to be abandoned, to puncture formality... but that could just be the champagne. Even the lady who passed through the crowd in the square with such regal authority is smiling again: yes, even she who is now sitting there among the vast exotic greenery and next to a glass of something expensive, even she who is sitting in a large bamboo throne like a Victorian Vicereine in her palace in India as if posing for a sepia photograph seems not immune to looking past the black and white marble floor of the elegant cast iron palm house and staring with pleasure at a new plinth among the sculptures outside.
The place is so precious that I have an impulse to be immature and scribble on the floor with wax crayons, pee in a plant pot or possibly draw all over her immaculate cream suit with a big felt tip pen. And what would I draw? Well, a big pair of tits on the jacket would be good for starters, but perhaps a tad predictable? Like a true artist, I let this reverie gallop until I have covered her outfit (mentally, that is) with coloured lights and gold paint and topped it off with a hat like an Art Deco skyscraper. Now the women in my head (there are suddenly lots of them, identical) are jumping up and doing a Busby Berkley routine around the potted palms.
Concentrate, laddie, concentrate… Smile nicely and you may avoid her chucking you in the dungeons (or whatever they do round here).
I couldn't half do with a pee.
Statues, clearly visible through the large mahogany and stained glass doors, have been placed extremely carefully, just the way an obsessive such as myself would arrange personal effects on a desk. The empty one is, I notice, just the right size for my sculpture.
"Yes", her eyes tell me, "that's the one!" But then she looks thoughtful.
A large, leather-bound book containing botanical illustrations is next to her wine on the marble-topped table. The woman points her cigarette holder at it and, when a servant finds a silk bookmark with a white-gloved hand, the massive tome opens easily at what is presumably a favourite page - a hand-coloured rendition of an exotic palm. There is a real version of the plant in the conservatory but she has ignored it so far, perhaps because it does not have a long and complicated Latin name by its trunk and is not exquisitely hand-painted, nor lovingly engraved with fine lines, thus no doubt considered an infinitely inferior beast altogether.
Charlotte is looking at the illustration with wonder but I am more interested in the real thing. It is then that the dynamics shift and the woman knows for sure that she and Charlotte have a common thread. There is something in the woman's manner of a child when a pair of new shoes loses the initial excitement of ownership, when the first crease in the leather becomes apparent. Charlotte is the pair still in the window, the ones that have also to be bought. The woman examines me through her monocle.
"Borrington will talk money with you." Turning to Charlotte, her smile is equally warm, if not a little more so. "Come and discuss your work with me, my dear; it is a bonus that you are here as well. I have, of course, had the exhibition poster brought to my attention... Most interesting." I want to stand my ground and state that money is an irrelevance as no deal has actually been struck with me regarding the sculpture, but that is not the real reason for my wanting to find objections. No, I am about to share my hallowed spot of recognition with a girl who cuts up menus with a pair of scissors and that, to my shame, chokes.
8
Charlotte and I have both decided to stay, our absence failing to turn the outside world upside down. It would appear, listening to the local station, that my mother has not called to ask the public to be on the look-out for her precious son and Mr. Donizetti seems to be equally relaxed about Charlotte's current mortal state.
We have been here two days now and Charlotte, after long conversations with Lady Pinke-Burnleigh - for that is the woman's name - has been given a light, spacious studio in the stable block. I have been given a smaller room in an outhouse the other side of the Italian Garden. It does not contain all I need (yet), but I reckon that promises are enough to keep me going.
And one can’t look a gift horse, etc, etc.
However…
If Charlotte were not here, I would be pleased at my good fortune but she is and, while this is not a contest, I cannot help but see her as forging ahead and winning some kind of race because of her slight – possibly imagined - advantage. She has an assistant (but does not really need one yet) and ample space (which I don't reckon she needs as much as me), whereas I have even less space - and fewer facilities and materials - than I had before.
The thing I have least of is inspiration: in my cold, illegal factory outhouse I was surrounded by the right smells, the right industrial sounds - the right dirt, even. I also had a connection with the factory yard, a shared history with it, not to mention the raw materials of my trade and even electricity. Was this a deliberate blow to my morale to break me down or mere practicalities on her part? I imagine being avenged in a glorious manner, my friend the factory uprooting itself at night, plonking itself down next to the stately home like a vast chicken collapsing on a nest and Her Ladyship waking up to lots of Victorian workmen banging away at lumps of metal while a wreath of black smoke surrounds her precious house and stains the curtains.
Mind, the likelihood of that happening is pretty remote.
The woman waltzes into my studio and eyes the still-pristine bench. Sighing, she pings a lone piece of metal sticking out of a wooden block.
"Mm, minimalism. Less is definitely more. I suppose that makes this the most of all?" Surveying the unopened crates, she moves onto one that is open but still cradling its cargo, an electric band-saw still wrapped in its plastic. "Is this, perhaps, not working for you?"
I don’t have any electricity yet.”
“Ah. Right.”
Yes, ah bloody right, so stick that in your fancy-pantsy cigarette holder, missus. The sculptured aquiline profile softens. Is that a slight chink in Her Ladyship’s armour I see? Just a flicker of an apology? I reassess the situation. Am I, I ponder, right to have such a feeling of ingratitude? Possibly not, but, there again, she doesn't own me.
I mope out and trudge down the gravel path outside my 'studio' - for that is what she calls it. Turning left, I pass through a gate let into an ancient brick edifice and find myself inside a walled garden, a place so quiet it would seem that only insects and plants share this common moment with me.
Time, I think, for a recollection.
I had a box of neat brown plastic rectangles when I was a child, a toy garden with plots and minute plastic plants you could push into them. I felt like I was God, making whole areas of vegetation arrive and depart in rapid motion and deciding that winter plants and summer flowers would coexist in random combinations. It was a land where I could decree "Thou shalt not have weeds!" and there weren't (but mainly because they didn't supply them in the box in the first place).
Pristine white plastic fences would plop in and out of this polythene ground, perfect in their antiseptic gloss.
And that was how Heaven would be.
But this is now and my bent-down examination of the busy, untidy, pungent jungle of grass blades, leaves, crawling insects and random dirt and stones is wakening something in me, something I need reminding of, and it feels okay - good, even. I get up and all on the ground is still again, just as the Earth is calm when seen from the distance of Space and betrays none of its noise and conflict while it floats in the heavens…
Ah, yes, the heavens… With their celestial mysteries…
“Look, Darthon (Nine Two Seven), isn’t that Earth? Apparently, it’s so large it takes a good ten minutes to get to the other side.”
“Yes, Madron (Six Five Three)… I’ve heard it’s worth the effort, though – my mum says there’s a great place where they do a mean Fisherman’s Platter. They say it’s on the site of the chip shop Simon Cowell went to as a little lad.”
“Who are ‘they’ when ‘they’ are at home?”
“Dunno, probably that smart-arse lot from Ipsalon (Five).”
“And who the fuck is ‘Simon Cowell’?”
So, the intrepid explorers park up by Britain and make their way to the Happy Horse Eatery, a modest establishment that is totally oblivious to its great significance in the mighty pantheon of Intergalactic myth and legend.
Reining in my errant thoughts, I survey the view in front of me.
The walled garden looks deserted but there, at one end, I see a corduroy-suited figure in a greenhouse, a greenhouse whose freshly painted white frame is at serious odds with the lichen-covered bricks. It is the figure's garments that attract my attention, though - the many browns of the faded shoulders, the ploughed fields of the corduroy and the rubbed baldness of the back.
I envisage the worn elbow of this gardener's fawn jacket charting many years of pruning, weeding, picking and irrigating: indeed, it is as if the arm inside is merely following the sleeve's ancient instructions when lifting the watering can and tilting it at the trunk of ancient grapevine.
The ruddy, roughly-shaven face does not smile as it sizes me up through the glass, but neither is there obvious disapproval. After an eternity of looking me up and down, the gardener then nods - not at me, but in the direction of the path through an ornate metal gate. There is still no smile, but a slight relaxing of that red-skinned head is apparent, as if a vital job has, at last, been carried out.
I imagine the thick corduroy suit sagging at the knees as it tells the legs they can leave off being quite so tense and in a state of readiness, the shirttail whispering (very quietly so the gardener can't hear) to the waistband of the trousers that it can let off being so uptight now the moment has been come and gone.
I smile hesitantly but I'm not quite sure yet if I will follow his nod. I watch the gardener remove a dead leaf from under a bunch of grapes and I am envious of his power to regiment apple trees at a whim and sentence and execute the withered heads roses just as he chooses, except that it is not at a whim because he is ruled by the seasons more than anyone. I am loath, however, to give up my romantic notion of the gardener being lord of all, at least in the garden.
And, when I look back on this moment, what will be my prevailing view of this establishment? Will I have been sheltered from the world by a wealthy and caring benefactor, or will I have learnt torrid facts about existence within this alien world the same as anywhere else? I'm undecided as to which I'd prefer.
And now the gardener delivers a more knowing nod. He knows. He knows what? Well, he obviously knows something that I don't. That's not difficult as this is the first time I've been here and he's as likely been here all his life, perhaps even feeling an affinity with that vine he is tending ever since his grandfather lifted him out of his pram one day to look at it for his very first time.
But let's not get carried away here. I am, to all intents and purposes, captive. Yes, a ‘guest’ with my own room, five-star food and a kind of studio, but still a prisoner of sorts. I could walk out of the gate anytime - I think - but this little world puts up a compelling case and is a refuge from the overblown adulation of my sculpture.
The gardener looks like my...
Uncle Peter who went to war with a photograph of my Aunt Marie in his pocket and came back with a bullet wound in the underpants. Aunt Marie was angry about that, but she was more angry at the fact that he had lost her picture; losing his penis came a close second, though.
These flashbacks of my memoirs are becoming irritating, especially now as I am now creating (somewhat against my will) a mental picture of Uncle Peter's altered anatomy but that is mercifully cut short by another nod. Now the gardener is looking at my staring face as if I am an imbecile (understandable). I smile awkwardly and follow the flick of his head, soon finding myself negotiating a narrow corridor between two wet rows of saplings. It has been raining and I am like a stick being dragged between their bushy ranks.
And now I am soaked.
Ha ha, very blimming funny.
Soon, though, these jostling youngsters give way to a wider path with larger trees on either side. These arch at the top and meet, thus making a pointed Gothic cathedral of branches. There are birds there and they are singing with a frightening sense of purpose; it is as if they are saluting me but I am not sure whether they are urging me on or warning me to return to that which is more familiar.
Familiar? But there is nothing here that I know, so I may as well go on as go back. The singing is getting so loud that I put my hands over my ears as I press on, all the while keeping my gaze fixed on the path because I am convinced that some of the birds are now staring at me as they keep up their relentless preaching.
It isn't long, however, before I reach a large wooden gate of grey, faded oak. It is not a portal that reveals a vista through its bars, nor one that promises more delights if only one should pass through. No, it is a solid door, one to discourage the progress of strangers.
I have known gates like this pop up in allegorical pictures. Sometimes the paintings have had figures in them imploring the viewer to go back and mend evil ways; at other times the portals have represented a challenge where passing through is been the start of a new direction in life. I decide it's the latter.
I try the heavy, pendulous handle but it is rusty and does not budge. Anyway, I don't have the time to explore as my watch tells me that I am due to eat in fifteen minutes, just giving me time to wash the rust from my hands, change my wet clothes and get to dinner with a couple of minutes to spare.
The dining room, like much of the decor, was apparently 'improved' in the eighteen-forties by the Fifth Marquis, a keen Mediaevalist who, according to Lady Pinke-Burnleigh (she of the cream suit), idolised Sir Walter Scott and would host lavish jousting tournaments loosely based on a vague notion of the Middle Ages – minus, of course, the inconvenience of the Black Death and beheadings. Similarly, one mustn’t forget the added courtesies that would have been much appreciated by his Mediaeval ancestors, such as a specially built terminus for guests to arrive by private train, an abundance of cigars and – most importantly - hot chocolate.
Of course, His Lordship himself missed out on progress too, but I suppose if you’ve never heard of aeroplanes, television and Sugar Bear cereal, you aren’t going to miss them in the first place.
The dining room, being a key beneficiary of the Marquis’ diligent vandalism, has been ‘improved’ on a grand, virile scale and it is my misfortune to have my back to a massive stone fireplace with a grate the shape of a portcullis and a blaze of logs akin to a forest fire. The open church-window tracery in the heavy Gothic dining chair is doing little to deflect the heat from the back of my neck.
I should be doing my bit to crank up the rather stilted conversation, but I can’t resist the mental image of the Marquis in his armour after a day’s jousting. I am imagining him wearing it in all sorts of situations and have just got to him sat on a train with his helmet on while reading a newspaper when I am asked my opinion on contemporary art.
“Totally baffling, your Ladyship.” Lady Pinke-Burnleigh sits stock still and stares at me, her head cocked to one side. For some reason I twig that this is not the answer she is waiting for – the heavy sigh is a bit of a giveaway, as is the droop of her shoulders while she stares forlornly at the flowers in the middle of the table.
So, what will my punishment be for not giving a dazzling, erudite reply? Twenty lashes with a genuine Mock-Mediaeval cat o’ nine tails? Perhaps to be tied to the Gothic dining chair so I can’t get away, sentenced to be bored to death by another fifteen courses?
The meal is served on Sévres, a very un-Mediaeval French porcelain, but one I quite like because of the signature turquoise blue. It has fond memories, too, as my grandmother had a few bits picked up in an antique shop. The woman is pleased when I recognise it, but it will take more than identifying the make of her china to thaw relations.
Little in the way of modern convenience has been allowed in to sully the experience and certainly nothing so pedestrian as a tablecloth has been allowed near the table, but then the deep patina and shine of the burr walnut is so gorgeous it would be a crime to cover it. The crystal tumblers are heavy and throw dazzling reflections on the oak-paneled walls, the great slabs of carved wood making those in the Mayor's office look superficial, lightweight.
There are three of us to keep happy and the butler is quick but not flustered, this ensuring the smooth serving of each course. He pauses a mere microsecond as he serves me, yet in that moment I get the clear message that patched and frayed jeans are not good enough for Her Ladyship and that if I wear the denim jacket with the picture of Che Guevara again the soup will bypass its usual route and get fast-tracked to my nether regions by means of an 'accident'.
So, what of the meal? Well, the tableware is heavy and superb quality. A greater gourmand than me would, however, be less interested in the knives and forks and devote more time to noticing the food, but to me it is merely fuel: I guess, though, it must be pretty good if the woman can afford someone to serve it up. The first dish is massive prawns with various bits and pieces.
Which tastes okay, I suppose.
Charlotte (who, I am shocked to discover, has turned out every inch the traitor), seems determined to be in the lady's good books and has dressed in an early nineteen-sixties pale Cambridge Blue gown she found laid out on her bed, the matt raw silk giving her hair a real chance to show off its new-found lustre. It would appear that Charlotte has showered, something I suppose I could have done, but Her Ladyship can go whistle. In the end, however, it’s Charlotte's overuse of the word 'excellent' that pisses me off the most.
The ‘main’ is some kind of chicken dish and, although I prefer meat when it's served up with fries, I decide not to ask whether they are an option. Perhaps tomorrow, if I'm still feeling surly. Charlotte remarks that the flavour is 'delicate', and I'm not sure if that is a compliment or just a way of saying it's bland (personally, I go with the latter). The third course is posh chocolate and some kind of ice cream. This one, according to Charlotte, is 'exquisite'.
Ok, now she’s really getting on my tit.
In truth, though, I am far more interested in the pattern in the carpet. It is a repeat based on a seventeenth century Mughal carpet from India. How do I know? I just do. Also, the original is in the other local stately home, Travercombe Hall. In my quest for inspiration, I have been there and filled notebook after notebook with patterns and everything goes in, from ancient oriental textiles (I already have this one), to manhole covers, to the cells of a leaf. The best view of a repeat in a carpet is the bit directly below and this means that I spend a good deal of the meal with my head down and looking at the floor.
I imagine the mites down there, portly dads in Hawaiian shirts snapping away with cameras while the mothers bury their noses in guidebooks and tell the children which part of the rug they are now in.
“Children, if you just follow me I can show you the spot where the artists feed. Artists are rare creatures and we are very lucky to have come across two in close proximity to each other. The distinctive financial ineptitude displayed by the male here is a trait typical of this breed and great care will have to be taken to make sure these two don’t mate and produce young as it could lead to further genetic complications such as poverty and a lackadaisical attitude to housework. Each artist makes its mark in a unique, distinctive way and you would, for example, always be able to recognise this one by the amount of crumbs under his chair.”
When the woman in the monocle stops staring at me and asks me if I am alright, I avoid the obvious, smart-arse seventeenth century Mughal answer because it may too late regarding the Sévres but I don't want to give away too much too soon. Apart from that, I don't want her thinking I like the quality of her stuff. Playing the Cautious Card, I just make a vague, feeble comment about the nice colours in the rug.
After dinner, I feign a headache because I've a desperate need to escape the evening I’m certain looms ahead. It is getting dark now because we were ages at the table, Lady Pinke-Burnleigh apparently oblivious at how much she was interrogating us. I want to judge her a meddling freak because I feel sorry for myself but I am ignoring what could be the truth; that I am, perhaps, just being a lousy guest... After all, it is not as if we're here against our will, is it? I get to the massive Mock-Mediaeval front door of solid oak and discover that the massive Mock-Mediaeval iron key has been turned in the massive Mock-Mediaeval lock by the all too real hour of nine p.m.
So, who turned it? Some little wizened Igor in a flunky’s tail coat and white breeches, a bald wrinkled retainer who has been in the family service for fuck knows how long? What the heck does it matter – we have been locked in and are about to spend our first night here whether we want to or not, because there has been no talk of taking us home. More than a little panicky, I grab a massive iron poker from the fireplace in the entrance hall and creep to the bottom of the stairs.
Ok: Now I’m just being plain stupid.
Bed.
My room is in the East Wing. It is large (obviously - it's a stately home) with the unlikely double act of an impressive marble fireplace in the shape of a Gothic castle and a bizarre choice of eighteenth century hand-painted Chinese wallpaper. I’m glad I brought the poker with me, because there are certainly no fire irons here to protect myself with. It can only be assumed that, if you want the fire poked, you ring the large tapestry bell pull and wait half an hour for Igor to drag his club foot up the stairs to find out what you want and then wait another half hour while he goes to get the poker, gives the dying embers a bit of a prod and then heaves his bony carcass out of the door to return it to a dark cellar somewhere.
But that could be mere conjecture.
Although a bog-standard eighteenth century country mansion, this particular bit is another nineteenth century pseudo-Mediaeval fantasy not even two hundred years old and, as I examine the beautiful Chinese brushwork, it occurs to me that there can't be many places where the wall coverings are older than the plaster underneath.
As I lie in the four-poster, I look past the embroidered canopy and curtains at the fireplace where pale stone knights and English long-bowmen look as if they are defending the battlements from the colourful Chinese pheasants flying around their heads. The no-nonsense, carved Gothic windows in this huge marble version of the Middle Ages and the ornate gold and lacquer-red Oriental pagodas that litter the delicate grey-blue Chinese landscape around it are surprisingly tolerant of each other.
The best irony of all is that I, someone obsessed with pattern, am staying in a room where even the wallpaper is hand-painted with ne'er a repeat in sight. This is the first time I've smiled in hours. Just how miserable do I have to be, for goodness' sake?
It is with a warm "hello" that Lady Pinke-Burnleigh greets me into the snooker room and she is pleased that the 'headache' that developed at dinner has, miraculously, disappeared. She is also unperturbed that I seem to have entered the room with a massive poker in my hand, no doubt realising that, if it were to come to hand-to-hand combat, I would lose on reach alone as she is standing next to an oak stand crammed with billiard cues.
"So glad you made it. Do you play?" Do I play? I’ll say so… I have a snooker hall right opposite my flat, thank you very much. However, it is soon painfully evident that hours of randomly knocking balls around threadbare baize in a gloomy dive has not prepared me for anything but a good drubbing at the hands of an expert, albeit one so gracious in victory.
Lady Pinke-Burnleigh has changed out of her black dinner jacket and is wearing a Victorian smoking cap, monocle, and Edwardian (man's) smoking jacket, the pale green piping around the edge of the quilted silk matching perfectly the stripes down the outside of her trousers. She is not self-conscious about being examined so closely and is actually very pleased that I have noticed the detail, that I am apparently interested in such things. I also notice Her Ladyship revealing, as she leans elegantly over the table to play a shot, silk stockings decorated with a French motif from the Thirties.
While a comment would reveal an encyclopaedic knowledge, it would also look tantamount to perving - and pretentiousness - on a grand scale (not to mention being branded as an anorak) so I resist and allow the opportunity to pass by unhindered.