‘Take raincoat off heater. Es schmilzt,’ she says gruffly, and I listen to her footsteps retreat down the corridor.
I glance at the pile of drawings and consider that they are hardly my best work. When I run out of reading material, it’s the drawing that keeps me occupied. I have to fill my free time with something. To stop the chimera of bitter revenge raising its ugly head. The demons of injustice are still present, and it will be a while before I manage to exorcise them all. Probably not until the day I leave this place.
I sit at the desk and tear another sheet of A4 from my pad. It’s not great quality paper, but at least I have something to draw on. I put in an order for some paper a while ago from an art shop in Lausanne, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Pencil poised, I breathe deeply, relishing the smell of melting plastic on the radiator behind me, and prepare to create another illusion.
* * *
Seven years ago
My beach in Greece could wait. The wistfulness of saying farewell to those leaving for the summer, and the uncomfortable feeling that I was getting myself into something I couldn’t handle, lessened each day. Anne’s wise advice ignored, I was a bona fide love-struck teenager.
I didn’t confront Matt with the story Anne and Terri had told me about Leila, not then, but kept it to myself. Instead I turned his unspoken confession into my own goal of healing his supposedly broken heart, without pressuring him into any kind of a relationship. I had no intention of tainting our courtship with questions about past girlfriends, painting myself as the jealous successor. If he considered his association with Leila unfinished, then I would wait for him to divulge it to me in his own time, would expect him to offer his honourable confession. But if he remained silent about her, then in my mind his liaison with her was over, finished. I was his new horizon. Ignore a smug cat for long enough and it will eventually crawl into your lap.
And the other rumour? I put it down to jealousy. Others will often find fault with someone they wish they could be like.
One day when the snow had melted, Matt and I hiked through the forest to a viewpoint known as the Eagles’ Nest, high above the Rhône Valley. Perched on a boulder, we admired the view across to the French ski resorts. The cliff dropped a thousand metres vertically, a stone’s throw from where we sat. Through the haze, Matt pointed out a village below us in the distance on the grey smudge of Lac Léman, and told me it would soon be time to put his boat back in the water.
‘You fascinate me, Lucille. Most girls I meet want something more. They’re always working a game to get a part of me, but you’re so free and easy. You weren’t looking for anything when you turned up on my mountain, and you haven’t expected anything of me. I appreciate that.’
‘I’ve enjoyed our time together so far,’ I offered timidly.
I knew by not defining our relationship, he was under no pressure to categorise it himself. ‘And maybe I’m happy to stick around. I have no plans, no obligations.’
‘That’s it, I think. The no obligation bit. It makes me want you to stick around.’
Matt put his arm tightly around my waist. I was impressed with his honesty. He surely wasn’t hiding anything.
‘Anne is letting me stay on her sofa while I look for work. She’s now renting a place of her own.’
I winced inside with the memory of my conversation with Terri and Anne.
Matt and I leaned in to each other, enjoying the view. He took off his shirt in the unexpected warmth, the sun shining on the niche where we sat on the rocks, our bodies protected from the wind by the granite at our backs.
‘You must let me draw you one day. You have perfect muscle form for the artist’s eye. I could do you in pastel, charcoal, even acrylic.’
I ran my hands lightly over his broad shoulders. He leaned forward slightly, a small shrug away from my fingers.
‘No, you will not draw me, Lucille. No drawings of me.’
I frowned. His sudden mood change confused me.
‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘No sketching. But it’s what I love to do, to express my appreciation of perfect form.’
I laughed playfully and trailed a finger down his bicep, but he didn’t smile. Face still turned away, a muscle ticked at his jaw.
‘Stick to drawing that,’ he said, pointing at the view. ‘Landscapes, mountain scenes. Let’s not talk about painting any more,’ he said abruptly.
Anger flared briefly, eclipsing the hurt at his initial shunning of my touch. I realised he’d never really asked me about my art.
‘But it’s what I love to do. You think cleaning toilets in a shitty hostel is enough to satisfy me?’
He turned to me, and in a flash, his dark demeanour changed to playfulness, with that hungry look in his eyes I recognised. My irritation softened, and I moulded my hands around the shoulders I had, moments before, imagined drawing. As he began removing articles of my clothing, I panicked. Ignoring any negative signals, I put my niggling angst down to worrying whether our situation on the footpath was too exposed.
* * *
A few days later a flyer appeared in Anne’s mailbox announcing a local art exhibition organised by a group of students at the international college. A series of personal interpretations of the modern masters would be on display. Intrigued, the two of us went along.
‘I’m not really a fan of modern art,’ she said as we walked past colourful renditions of Picasso, Kandinsky, Braque and Matisse. ‘But these are pretty good.’
‘Who’s in charge? Who’s their teacher?’ I asked, studying a bold still life, in acrylic greens and blues. ‘This is the kind of stuff I was doing at university. Hard to believe a little college in the Alps has students turning out this kind of work.’
‘That’s the professor over there.’
Anne pointed to a portly-looking gentleman at one end of the hall, his sparse white hair in disarray. He seemed a little awkward, seeking solace in a glass of wine the students were offering for their vernissage. He reminded me of an Oxford don, a tweedy mussed look. But nevertheless approachable. On the spur of the moment I introduced myself.
‘Patterson, Iain. How do you do?’
His boisterous handshake rattled the bones in my arm. I introduced myself, likened the work his students had exhibited to a project my class had participated in during my first year at university. It turned out we had a connection. One of my mentors at Leeds was an old colleague of his.
‘Haven’t heard from old Hibbert for a while. Multi-talented chap. Great artist, but also wrote some excellent plays in his time.’
The professor waffled on, his tone wavering somewhere between didactic and aristocratic. The plum in his mouth, rather than marking him as pompous, suited his eccentric demeanour. I didn’t want him to think I was another college dropout, but the association with my old professor made me wonder if I hadn’t done something unwise by giving up my studies in a subject where my skills truly lay.
‘So it must be half-term. You’ll be going back for the end of the semester soon, won’t you? Spring ball next month. Always a hoot.’
‘Actually, no … I’m not going back.’ Then thinking this sounded like I was a failure: ‘I’ve taken a break from my studies. I’m on a cultural tour of Europe.’
Patterson cocked an eyebrow, and changed the subject. He’d heard that one before.
‘What do your people do?’
It amused me to hear him refer to my parents in such an old-fashioned way, especially as my relationship with them was somewhat strained with my unexpected voyage to the continent.