Page 4

Then

Alice

I love the life drawing class, it’s the highlight of my week. I love Josef, the Spanish model, who sits huddled in his blue dressing gown, waiting for the lecture to finish and the drawing to begin. I love Rita Miller, the life tutor, who speaks so passionately at the beginning of each class and always fills me with renewed confidence for my time here. Gordon King takes me down, Rita Miller builds me back up, week after week. And I also love the fact that within thirty seconds of seeing Josef stark naked, I am able to scrutinise and measure his genitals as if sketching an arrangement of fruit.

Every week Rita tries to teach us about observation.

‘Beginners think freedom is the greatest thing,’ she says. ‘But most beginners don’t have any freedom because they are in bondage to their limitations. Before you can be spontaneous, first you must learn to see and have a command of the language that enables you to express what you are seeing.’

She flicks her hand towards the small platform at the front of the class.

‘Josef, I think we’re ready for you.’

The life model removes his dressing gown and folds it carefully on the chair before ascending the platform. He drapes himself over a green hessian screen, notes of a crucified Jesus there, a posture that has clearly been pre-designed by Rita. Head turned to the side and tilted down, each arm stretched out, wrists limp, hands dangling. He is rather Jesus-like, with his sculptured face, and his thin, impeccably defined body. Flat stomach, those strong, muscular thighs, hands with long fingers, curved now into the position of claws.

‘Think about what you see,’ Rita says. ‘Think. Not gawp. I’m not talking about folds of skin or the underlay of bones.’ She points to Josef with a flourish and he gazes back dispassionately. ‘What we’re looking for are those links and underlying patterns, those insights and sensitivities that at first seem hidden. Without observation you have no content.’

When I look at Josef, I imagine his backstory. A young man who was tempted away from a traditional life in provincial Spain by the wild hedonism of seventies London, a place where sex shops and pornography cinemas and strip shows and prostitutes line the grimy, litter-strewn streets and marijuana is smoked like cigarettes (right now there will be four or five students on the roof of the Slade sharing a joint). Perhaps he is gay. Or he’s ardently heterosexual, here for his promised sexual revolution, in a city where women – drunk, stoned women – dance topless at parties and engage in acts of defiant promiscuity. Perhaps, though, he is neither of these things. Perhaps I just have sex on the brain.

True to say I went to bed and woke up thinking about Jacob, the beautiful singer with his pencil-thin cheekbones, and the poetry of his songs. Never before has music affected me in this way. Yes, I collect the albums of the day – T. Rex, The Doors, The Rolling Stones ( Sticky Fingers , released last year, played so often the grooves of the record have stretched and turned a whitish-grey). But something happened to me as I stood in that densely packed, smoke-saturated room watching Jacob sing of endings and premature goodbyes. I think it’s that I comprehended – physically, rather than intellectually – the unity of sound and voice, the notes of each instrument, as though my entire physiology was absorbing it. And still it was more than that. The words Jacob had written, the words he sang, he believed in them, he knew them to be good. Self-assurance was the drug that drew me to him.

Now when I gaze at Josef I want to import these new sensations from last night, a feeling of longing, lust, envy, admiration. While I draw Josef’s eyes – haunting and mesmeric they seem to me now – I hear Jacob singing his lament to a girl named Sarah.

The sketch turns out to be the best thing I’ve ever done. This time when the students are told to gather round, it is my drawing they come to see.

‘Observation is fed by the imagination,’ Rita says. ‘What Alice has done wonderfully here is capture a sense of character that she can only have imagined. See the look of sadness in Josef’s eyes? A sort of yearning, wouldn’t you say?’

After class there seems to be some kind of commotion on the ground floor. The high-pitched voice of Muriel Ashcroft, the Slade’s receptionist, shrieks up towards us as Rick and I walk down the spiral staircase.

‘I’m sorry, but if you don’t have an appointment then I really must ask you to leave.’

‘But I’m here to talk to two of your students about a potential commission.’

‘Which students?’

‘A girl and a guy; the girl was called Alice.’

‘But which Alice? We have two.’

‘Oh well, this Alice is very – how shall I put it? She’s a girl that stands out.’

Rick and I arrive on the ground floor and Jacob Earl is standing there, his whole face breaking into a smile as soon as he sees me. There is no time to prepare, and this first sighting causes another chemical reaction: bones, cells, blood, heart clamouring and craving beneath my skin. And I find that I’m grinning back at him, stupidly I should imagine. If I could freeze one moment in my life, perhaps it would be this.

‘There you are. This is my Alice,’ Jacob says to Muriel, who is looking really quite flustered in the presence of this beautiful man. Perhaps she’s human after all.

And how that ‘my’ sounds on his lips …

‘Very well,’ Muriel says. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take your “business meeting” outside?’

Jacob is taller than I’d realised and dressed again in black, a shirt with flowing sleeves, a long scarf patterned with brown and cream feathers, flared black jeans and the snakeskin boots of last night.

The three of us walk out of the front door, down the steps and into the courtyard.

‘Thought you guys were going to stick around for a drink?’ Jacob says.

‘The bar was packed,’ Rick replies. ‘The bell for last orders had rung, we wouldn’t have got served. Not much point sticking around when you can’t get a drink.’ He laughs, and Jacob does too.

‘So. I wanted to talk to you about a potential project. A drawing project.’ He nods at our sketchbooks. ‘I’m guessing you’re pretty good at drawing?’

‘Alice is the star,’ Rick says. ‘You should see what she’s just drawn in class. What’s the project?’

‘Potentially our next album cover. Eddie and I had this idea of having a sketch of the band on stage, but very posed, a bit like a still life.’

‘Rick is who you need,’ I say, hoping Jacob doesn’t notice the tremor in my voice. ‘He’s the most talented artist we’ve got. He’s already selling his work.’

‘Sweet, you two. Like a couple of newly-weds. Buy you a coffee and we can talk about it?’

In the flesh, in the mid-afternoon light, Jacob looks older than he did on stage, around thirty, I’d say. But still hauntingly beautiful. Eyes, cheekbones, mouth. Slim neck, pronounced collarbones, the dip between them around the size of my thumb.

‘You go, Alice,’ Rick says, unexpectedly. ‘You’re the best at drawing and it’d be good for you.’

‘Wait. No. Hang on.’ I try to stop him, but Rick just smiles and walks away.

‘I’m meeting someone,’ he throws back over his shoulder, which is obviously a lie.

‘Don’t worry, Alice,’ Jacob says. ‘Strictly business.’

Though the way he says it, with eyes that are serious, a twisted mouth that isn’t, makes me wish it wasn’t just business.

‘Do you like coffee?’

‘Yes, sure, coffee, tea, Coke, anything.’

Jacob leans in, his face now only inches from mine.

‘I meant real coffee. Italian coffee. Coffee that’s more of a religious experience. Coffee to blow the mind.’

‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had one like that.’

‘Then we’re going to Bar Italia.’ He nods at the sketchbook under my arm. ‘Bring your etchings.’