A Different River Page 4

  She took a closer look. Sturdy. Small bust, wide hips. Fortyish? Not young, anyway. In the descending version, her head was turned slightly to her right, eyes cast down as if glancing over the banister, into the hall. Perhaps making sure there was no one about. Pausing to listen. Or to have second thoughts. A few minutes (or hours) later she pauses again, on her way up this time, head turned enough to reveal the tip of her nose beyond a curtain of sleek hair. But it was the birthmark below her left shoulder blade which caught Miriam’s eye, bringing this unknown woman to life more than either her nipples or near-black pubic hair.

  Were she to pursue this life modelling job, her nakedness would be studied in forensic detail. Art students must be accustomed to nudity. Would they be critical of her shape? Her age? Would they see her as decrepit stripper or more a compilation of elements, some of which – hands, she imagined – were trickier to draw than others? Callum had said it was easier to bare your soul to strangers than to someone known to you. Baring your body might be easier, too.

  She took a couple of steps back. So who was she, this ‘woman on the stair’? Knox’s wife? Lover? She certainly couldn’t imagine anyone painting their mother, or daughter, naked – although hadn’t she read somewhere that Lucien Freud…?

  The young man at the desk could give her no information on the painter or his – her? – subject. And, back at the house, when she googled ‘J. L. Knox artist’ the best it could come up with was James Knox, CEO of a painting and decorating firm in St Louis.

  ‘I’ve been doing some research,’ she said when Callum phoned.

  ‘Research?’

  She explained about the changing rooms. ‘I’d like to give it a go.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well I’ve been doing some thinking, too. Let’s start with head and shoulders. You’ve a good face. Timeless.’

  ‘You mean old.’

  ‘I mean timeless,’ he said. ‘I’ve okayed your appointment with the college. We can sort out the paperwork when you come in.’

  ‘When d’you need me?’ she said.

  ‘Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Nine-thirty to twelve-thirty. Does that suit?’

  What if the children were ill? And there were those tiresome ‘INSET’ days…

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What should I wear?’

  ‘Something unfussy.’

  ‘A T-shirt?’ she said.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Miriam’s worldly goods sat in a sprawling hangar on the industrial estate. The interior of AAA Storage was something to behold. Row after row of what amounted to lock-up garages. CCTV cameras scanning. Forklift trucks scuttling up and down the alleyways, laden with boxes and sofas and white goods. All accompanied by the sporadic clatter of metal doors. Sometimes, when she lay awake in bed, she imagined the place, vast and echoey, shadowy figures creeping about.

  She was free to access her possessions whenever she liked. A keycard allowed her into the building and a four-digit code, chosen by her, opened the door to her container. She made a point of going there every couple of weeks, needing validation of her old life and confirmation that something else lay ahead.

  Deciding what to take to Naomi’s had been like packing for a holiday without knowing where she was going or how long she’d be away. Eight months down the line it was gratifying to know she hadn’t been far adrift with her selection.

  Occasionally she needed to retrieve this or that and she was heading back to the car with a couple of books and a clip-on lamp when someone called her name. Turning, she saw a woman hurrying towards her across the car park.

  ‘It is you,’ the woman said.

  Yes, it was her. But who was this, holding her arms out in a welcoming gesture? She smiled, waiting for the appropriate part of her brain to spew out the answer but the woman got there first.

  ‘It’s Stephanie,’ she said. ‘Goodness me. It must be five years.’

  Stephanie. Stephanie. Stephanie.

  ‘Steph,’ Miriam said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We had to bring the car to the body shop.’ She indicated a row of prefabricated buildings off to her left. ‘I had a slight contretemps with a bollard.’

  ‘But I thought you’d—’

  ‘We did. But we’re back. Doug got a big promotion.’

  Stephanie and Doug. She taught geography. He was something in the bank.

  ‘You’re still at Kelsey,’ Stephanie said – a statement rather than a question.

  The news of Sam’s death, the scandal surrounding his gambling and her ‘illness’, had circulated more quickly than Miriam would have dreamed possible. By the time she’d felt up to facing the world, Naomi had made sure those who should know did know. She grown accustomed to friends and ex-colleagues crossing the road or diving into shops, uncomfortable at the prospect of meeting her, but Stephanie’s ignorancecaught her off balance.

  ‘I’m not actually,’ she said.

  Stephanie’s smile gave way to a questioning frown. ‘Oh. So…?’

  ‘I’m at the art college.’

  ‘Art college? What on earth are you doing there?’ Stephanie had always been unsubtle.

  ‘Pastoral stuff. Admissions. Admin. A bit of everything.’

  She’d rehearsed this fantasy ready to break the news of her new job to Naomi, nevertheless when it popped out so readily, and so plausibly, she was impressed with her quick reaction.

  ‘Really?’ Stephanie said. ‘I’m surprised. You were such a brilliant teacher—’

  ‘Was I?’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine where you got that idea from.’

  ‘Everyone… You always…’

  She felt empowered by Stephanie’s floundering but her smugness was short-lived.

  ‘Actually I’m meeting up with the old crowd tomorrow evening,’ Stephanie said. ‘You should come along. We can have a good old catch-up.’

  Miriam hadn’t seen ‘the old crowd’ since Sam’s funeral when she’d been pretty much out of it. Afterwards, several of them had tried to contact her but Naomi had fended off their calls and they’d soon given up. Occasionally she might glimpse one of them in Marks’s or Waterstones, and they’d doubtless seen her, but it was easier to walk in the opposite direction.

  ‘Shall I give you a piece of advice?’ she said.

  Stephanie smiled a vague, expectant smile and nodded.

  ‘Never look back,’ she said and headed for her car.

  ‘But what about the children?’ her father said when he made his usual Sunday phone call.

  ‘It’s only a couple of mornings a week, Dad. They’re at school ’til three-thirty. My mornings are free.’

  He paused and she waited for his next question. ‘Don’t they need someone in the office full-time? How will they manage when you’re not there?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t ask.’

  ‘They must know what they’re doing. I’ll find out all the details next week.’

  ‘So how much are they paying you?’ her father said. ‘You’ve got a degree. You’re over-qualified for clerical work.’

  ‘That’s not what this is about, Dad,’ she said.

  Naomi had accepted the news of her job without this cross-examination but she should have known her father would demand chapter and verse.

  Time to play her trump card. ‘Aren’t you pleased I feel well enough to take on a job?’

  ‘Of course I am. I just think you could do better.’

  ‘Let’s see how this goes first,’ she said.

  By the time they were saying goodbye, she almost believed that she was going to be answering emails and dealing with student applications.

  6

  Callum was waiting for her in the foyer. ‘You look a bit frazzled.’

  They’d got halfway to school when she’d remembered Max’s consent form for his upcoming trip to the city farm and she’d had to rush them back to the house, Rosa wailing that they’d be late. By the time she’d seen them in to school and str
uggled across town through the morning traffic, she was feeling like a rag.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  The building was throbbing with people, everyone knowing where they had to be and what they had to do. They carried things – rucksacks, portfolios, lengths of timber. One girl was struggling along with what looked like a giant dartboard.

  ‘We’re on the first floor,’ Callum said.

  She followed him up the stairs and along a gloomy corridor. One or two of the students stopped to speak to him but no one took any notice of her. Since leaving the house, she’d had a distinct sense of detachment and their failure to acknowledge her accentuated this to the point of her wondering whether she was really there.

  The room Callum led her to was high-ceilinged, distorting its proportions and making it seem smaller than it was. Running along one wall, tall windows – north-facing she assumed – sprang from a high sill. Lights with conical metal shades dangled from long chains. The creamish walls were scuffed, the parquet floor spotted with paint. Easels were arranged in a rough semi-circle focused on a podium – half a metre or so above floor level – on which stood a chair and low table. They might have time-travelled back a hundred years.

  Callum pointed to a door in the corner. ‘That’s the model’s room – more of a cupboard actually – if you want to dump your stuff. And the loos are at the end of the corridor.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got five minutes.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me what you want me to do,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll warm up with quick poses. Fifteen minutes for each, with a short break to give you time to stretch. We’ll take a coffee break around ten-thirty and use the second half of the session for one pose – again we’ll break every fifteen minutes.’

  Students started to arrive, chatting and laughing, dumping their bags and coats on the floor.

  He helped her up on to the podium and pointed to the chair.

  ‘How d’you want me to sit?’ she said.

  ‘However feels comfortable. You don’t have to keep absolutely still. Try not to tense up or your muscles will ache. Okay?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so.’

  She sat down, pushing the small of her back against the chair, facing straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the light switch on the opposite wall.

  The students, eight or nine of them, brought their easels nearer, adjusting the angle and height and fiddling with drawing materials.

  Callum clapped his hands. ‘Okay, people. This is Miriam. She’s our model today.’

  A murmur of welcome ran around the group and she felt the colour rising in her cheeks. He explained what he wanted from them and how the morning would be structured and, as they started drawing, the room fell silent.

  She was breathing too quickly and, before a few minutes had passed, her shoulders began to ache. She took several deep, slow breaths and willed her mind to wander but her thoughts failed to escape from the silent room. By the time Callum called ‘Let’s stop there’ her every muscle was taut.

  The second session was easier. This time she slumped a little and altered the angle of her head. The students had swapped places so as to have a different viewpoint and she could see more of their faces. There were nine of them. Six girls and three boys – although some of them were too old to be ‘girls’ or ‘boys’.

  As they continued, Callum wandered amongst them, pausing now and again, glancing between whatever was on their easel and her face. They seemed at ease with his silent scrutiny.

  ‘Let’s get a coffee,’ he said after the fourth session.

  ‘It’s very different from how I’d imagined it would be,’ she said. ‘Time drags and then suddenly it rushes on. Very odd.’

  By the time they returned, the students had reassembled. The mood in the room was more relaxed, or maybe she felt more confident. This time Callum directed her pose, tilting her head a little this way and that. Once he was satisfied, the students moved their easels and off they went again.

  She imagined her ex-colleagues at their Friday-night get-together. Stephanie’s account of their meeting in the car park. They’d soon put her right on how things had been – or how they imagined they’d been. No one would ever know the whole story.

  After each short break Callum made sure she adopted the same position. Her neck and her back ached and her hands were cold through lack of movement but she was finding it easier to give herself up to her thoughts. The stop-start of the process chopped her musings into chunks and, each time she resumed, it was as if she’d started reading a new chapter. Stephanie. Getting Rosa and Max to school on time. What the new owners might have done to her beautiful home.

  Callum called a halt at twelve-thirty and the students shuffled out, a couple of them casting a quick ‘thanks’ towards her.

  ‘So?’ he said.

  ‘It’s made me realise how infrequently I sit still doing nothing.’

  On her way out she called in at his room and he gave her several forms to complete. ‘You can bring them on Thursday,’ he said. ‘You are coming back?’

  ‘Won’t they get fed up with drawing the same face?’ she said.

  ‘Different group on Thursday,’ he said.

  ‘How was it?’ Naomi said.

  ‘Interesting. A bit tiring. But it’s always like that when you tackle something new, isn’t it?’

  She waited for Naomi to come back with more questions. Her father would have demanded every last detail but as long as it didn’t interfere with childcare, her daughter clearly wasn’t interested in her mother’s ‘little office job’.

  Next morning she did a big Sainsbury’s shop, prepared meals for the next two days and made a batch of bolognese sauce to put in the freezer. She cleared her ironing pile and phoned British Gas to arrange a boiler service, and switched her dental check-up from Tuesday to the following Monday.

  Her phone rang whilst she was hanging her shirts in the wardrobe. The screen showed ‘Louise T’, one of the ‘old crowd’ as Stephanie called them. They must have had a good old gossip about her at their get-together. Maybe they’d drawn straws to decide who would phone her. She let the phone ring through to voicemail, thankful that Louise left no message.

  Yesterday had gone well enough. But next week the students were expecting a nude model. The ones who’d attended the session had taken their work seriously. If anyone were looking for a quick thrill, there were easier ways to ogle naked women than signing up for art school. The students weren’t the problem here. She was. And if she were in any doubt whether she would be able to stand naked in front of them, it would be only fair to tell Callum right now.

  She went up to her bedroom and quickly stripped off her clothes. Standing in front of the wardrobe mirror, she assessed her body, making sure not to draw in her stomach or push out her breasts or stand straighter than was comfortable. She studied herself from all angles. Front. Side. Back. She turned again, more slowly, imagining herself the focus of nine pairs of eyes. And not for a couple of minutes but for three hours – although those first minutes would surely be the most uncomfortable.

  She went to the top of the stairs and started down, stopping and planting her bare feet side by side roughly where the woman in the painting had stopped. The natural thing was to steady herself with a hand on the banister rail but the woman’s arms had been at her sides. She dropped her arms and turned her head a little to her right. It wasn’t long before her head began to swim. It had been her intention to continue to the bottom but instead she did a kind of shuffling turn until she faced the stairs, her back to the void – was that how it had happened that day in 1934? She resolved to return to the gallery soon and take a closer look.

  Thursday morning’s session followed a similar pattern but this time the students were livelier, chatting as they worked, inspecting each other’s work. They showed surprise at having an older and fully clothed model. One young man told her that she had an unusual face ‘in a good way’.

  ‘How are you feeling
about next week?’ Callum said when she returned the college forms.

  ‘I think I’ll be okay.’

  ‘Good. I think so too.’

  ‘Any tips?’ she said.

  ‘You might want to bring along a robe. You can slip it off once you’re in position. That’s what life models generally do.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It means you don’t have to walk across the room with nothing on. It minimises the titillation aspect.’

  She’d remained calm until now but his insensitive aside caused her to blush.

  On the way home she stopped at a small boutique and spent well over her week’s earnings on a satin robe – plum-coloured with orange piping. Not something she’d wear at home but she could see that the trick to all this was to compartmentalise her life.

  On Monday night, she found it hard to get to sleep and then a raucous cat fight woke her at 5am. At breakfast time, the children played up, squabbling over a puzzle printed on the back of the cornflakes box. The tussle resulted in a bowl of cereal crashing to the floor. They murmured apologies but showed scant remorse, unperturbed by the shards of pottery and splatter of milk. Her subsequent scolding, made more ferocious by anxiety, reduced Max to tears and sent Rosa into a rage: ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’ Had she not been about to get into a car, she would have taken a nip of brandy.