The
phone call. Quarter to ten. The name on the phone showed my friend
Carl's name, but the voice was a woman. She sounded stressed and
tearful, as if having to force herself to do this stuff. It was
Carl's wife. Was I a friend? We had met the once, she and I, but she
did not know the history. It has been some years since Carl and I
have been in touch much - life taking us to different parts of the
country - almost, but not quite losing touch. Through her tears she
gave me the news. He had died.
It
reminded me of another phone call, also unexpected. Not long after my
marriage breakup, also out of the blue. It was Carl.
“Was
I still book selling? Was I interested in some more art catalogues?”
“Yes
and Yes.”
“And
where are you and how are you?”
I
was still in something of a blank space after the breakup. He had
moved on as well, living quite away from where I had last known him.
He only found me because of my name – far too unusual a name –
and the connection to a second-hand book shop. But I was so glad of
the accident – it seemed pure serendipity. My X's latent antagonism
– I don't think she liked the competition from a really good artist
– it showed up her own lack of consistent ability at art, if you
know what I mean – that antagonism had staled the relationship with
Carl. It was simply uncomfortable meeting up, at least if my X was
there, and meeting up otherwise was difficult, her not liking me to
spend time away. Now I was free of that poison.
“So,
what serendipity ... Yes, definitely... It was really good to talk
... Yes, I would like the catalogues ... Yes, as soon as I am sorted
out some more, I will come down to look at them ... Yes –
brilliant.”
But
then the bookshop closed. An almost good idea the shop. Liquidating
before it went septic was the only real option. The end of twenty
years of trading in one place or another, but interesting and a way
of making a living. Interesting as much because of the people as
because of the books – although many of those were rare, or
beautiful, or intriguing, or just plain so far off the wall as to map
the outer limits of human eccentricity. Am I taking about the books
or the people there? Not sure – could apply to both. And with the
bookshop gone so was the obvious reason for travelling all the way
down to see Carl.
In
the wonderful way life does, I then found myself staying not far from
where he now lived. I grabbed the opportunity. Phoned, arranged and
went. It was quite some years of not seeing each other, but there are
friendships that just are so simple, so natural, so right that we
just clicked back in just as if we were still slumping into chairs in
the staff room at the end of a knacking day of coercing spot-ridden
teenagers. It had been our habit through those years of teaching at
the same school, that end of the day slump. Shared exhaustion, shared
frustration with the authorities, shared despair of ever getting the
little dears' grey matter to respond – but respond the little dears
did, in spite of our despair, and in spite of our despair that they
wouldn't. Not quite sure why I am calling them little dears,
considering the lumpy, hulking monsters the boys grew into under our
attention, or in the case of so many of the girls, fluffy airheads.
Rooms full of incredible hulks and cotton-wool bimbos: the joy of
secondary school teaching.
One
incident in particular sticks in my mind. I referred to it the last
time we met. One year we both had the privilege of teaching a bottom
set of exceptionally ungifted pupils. They were so far adrift from
the normal that a special curriculum has to be designed for them.
They were almost on a level of finding counting to four a challenge.
The staff nicknamed the set “Fraggle Rock”. It was the last term
before they were released onto the world, so they were all mostly
sixteen. Carl also had an adult evening class, to which he taught
life drawing, and was short of models, so he asked if anyone in that
set would like to earn a little money by posing. They need not be
nude, just stripped to their shorts would do.
To
Carl's horror one volunteered, the one we sometime called “full
frontal lobotomy” - on account of his being so loose of so many
screws all at the same time. This was a hapless child around whom
nothing was safe – chairs, tables, other children, pens, pencils,
items of clothing, everything – it was all in danger of going
flying, being knocked over, being fiddled to pieces, accidentally
being thrown across the room, or otherwise turning into an unexpected
hazard. This was a child congenitally incapable of staying on task or
consistently following any instruction, no matter how simple. This
was a child that could claim that “it weren't me” even when
whatever it was that had just broken was still in his hand. The
“child” was now a near six foot bean pole with a skin that could
only be described as erupting with a constantly changing flora of the
most lurid acne. I swear they grew and moved around on his face even
as you watched.
Carl
realised that it would be a double challenge; a challenge to his
night-school students to draw such an angular and afflicted model; a
challenge to Full-Frontal to sit still and manage somehow not to
disrupt, destroy, dismember or anything else starting with “d”
that you might want to think of, including simply disintegrating on
the spot.
The
rest of us in the staff room felt it was simply too much to inflict
Full-Frontal on any set of adults, especially the unprepared or the
uninitiated. However, as he was the only volunteer, Carl went ahead.
Full-frontal
tried very hard. He did sit still, at least some of the time. And he
did manage not to scratch too much. He did fall off the chair he was
sitting on in one pose - but only once. During one of the breaks, as
Carl started to arrange him for a longer pose, Full-Frontal suddenly
pipes up
“Sir,
do your models usually go nude then?”
“Yes,
but you do not have to” answered Carl
Clearly
something was working in Full-frontal's brain. The class resumed
drawing the new pose. Full-Frontal sat very still. Suddenly he jumps
up, tears off his shorts and pants, throws them to the wall and sits
back down into the pose with a glint in his eye. Full-Frontal had
gone full-frontal.
Stories
like Full-Frontal going full-frontal we exchanged whilst lift-sharing
on the journey into school from Winchester. There was much, at times
dark, humour, on those journeys. There is an insanity between
teachers at times because of the enormity of the work, a challenging
job made near impossible by cuts, never ending new regulations
imposed from above by those who have never been in a classroom,
coercive management and escalating work loads. To make matters worse
we both hated the new head-master. Carl's revenge was to paint him
having his head ripped off by a masked wrestler. It was a part of a
series of painting that sold very well. They were all based on the
excitement he had seen on the faces of women watching wrestling
matches; he had noted their intense arousal and glee.
It
was a subject that interested him greatly. He once asked me if I knew
of any books on the subject of female fantasy. At the time I knew a
friend who was a clinical psychologist specialising in sexual
problems - well, what else do you really expect the son of a Church
of England vicar to specialise in? - so I asked him. He gave me a
couple of titles that I gave to Carl. I don't know if Carl ever
followed it up or not.
My
mid-life crisis took me out of teaching, Carl's took him into a
select girl's public school. Given Carl's favourite painting subject
– the female nude - I did wonder if this was rather like letting a
poacher loose in the forest, but then I misjudged him, he was far too
professional.
I
moved away from the town where we both lived, and so our lives began
to drift apart; occasional contacts, the annual Xmas card. I used to
see him sometimes when I was selling books in the town where he
lived. That is when I bought a whole lot of art catalogues from him,
which is what made him think of me again all those years later.
At
one time he asked me to try selling some of his prints. I took them
to the International Book and Print fair in London. I did manage to
sell some.
Just
before I left Hampshire for good, I took the remaining prints back to
him. He was looking terrible. His marriage had broken up and he was
having the house divided so he could let out half to pay his X. He
told me about how the marriage had come to pieces when he took early
retirement, not to sit around, but to focus on what he really wanted
to do – paint. He was making a reasonable living at it, but it was
not good enough for his X. She felt he had thrown all the
responsibility to earn a living on her. His son, Jack, was not too
bad about the divorce. Jack was at university and thought that it was
just the sort of thing that happens, but Carl's daughter, who was
about eighteen, had totally rejected him, she was completely furious
with him, and would have nothing whatsoever to do with him. I think
the alienation last for many years. I am not sure if they ever really
got it back together.
I
am glad I got to see him a couple of times in this last year. It was
good to introduced my new partner to him and to see his recent work,
to share some time, and to feel comfortable with each other, just as
we had in those days of teaching at the same school. It always felt
like an intuitive and empathetic friendship that needed no words.
