You Did Say Have Another Sausage Read online

  Jeff and I lived across the road from each other. When we got home, he seemed to want to keep our conversation going a little longer as we stood in the street. I edged towards the garden gate as we talked, and then opened it, but every time I took a step towards the front door Jeff seemed to follow.

  “Jeff,” I asked, “are you locked out?”

  “Er, no, could you do me a favour?”

  “If I can,” I answered, wondering what was going on.

  So Jeff opened his portfolio and took out his life drawings and asked me if I would look after them. He gave me a sheepish look, even by Jeff’s standards.

  “I understand,” I said sympathetically.

  “Thanks,” he said with some relief, and walked across the road. Just as he was opening his front door I couldn’t resist shouting

  “Jeff! When do you want your dirty pictures back?”

  His index finger went straight to his lips in an exaggerated ‘shush’ as he disappeared inside quicker than a sideways glance from Mr. Shiels.

  My mum and dad had always taken a keen interest in my art work and, as they perused my drawings, they wondered why Jeff’s work was also in my portfolio. They were amused when I told them the reason. All I got from my fourteen-year-old sister Linda was an expression of raised eyebrows, as if I had been caught with some top-shelf titillation magazines.

  I am often asked why art students have always studied the naked human form, and not just from a bobby on the beat. The short answer is that there is no hiding place when studying the human body, for the artist that is, not the model. If a drawing or painting of an inanimate object is not totally accurate it might not be immediately apparent to the viewer. However, if you look at a picture of a nude figure, any lack of accuracy is immediately obvious. In other words, when students are studying life drawing there is no margin for error and it is the most disciplined subject to develop drawing skills.

  There are examples in art history which would initially seem to contradict this explanation; for example, the rearranged facial features of Picasso’s Cubist portraits or the monumental figures of his Blue Period. But they were totally accurate observations. His models really did look like that. I am joking of course but I’m sure you catch my drift.

  Anyway, all of this is what Jeff told his mum and dad as a reason for drawing a lady with no clothes on, the lady that is, not Jeff. I think he got away with it, because after two weeks he stopped asking me if he could keep his drawings in my folder.

  Is it a Polar Bear in a Blizzard?

  As Christmas approached, all the students started to look forward to the party season; we decided to ask if we could hold a disco in the exhibition hall. Gerry was all for it but he told us that the final decision could only be made by the principal, Mr. Gill. I was ‘volunteered’ as spokesman and went to see him one morning in mid-December. Mr. Gill was not the artiest person imaginable; he wore a tweedish three-piece suit and tie, he was bald with a Bobby Charlton style comb-over and wore glasses which were like the bottom of a beer bottle. My un-flattering description of him notwithstanding, he was a true gentleman of the old school: extremely courteous and very well-spoken. He looked as though he belonged more in the manager’s office in the bank next door. He granted permission for the party without much persuasion but, being a rather pedantic sort, he stipulated that he could only allow us to have Friday afternoon off to decorate the room. He looked at the timetable and said that he would be unable to pay Rita if the life-class was cancelled. The students quite rightly decided that this would be unfair to the model, and, consequently, we agreed a compromise with the principal, whereby Rita would pose as usual and we would take turns to be in the studio. The exhibition hall was duly a hive of activity as it was transformed into a disco for the Christmas do.

  Midway through the afternoon, it was my turn to man the donkey in the life studio and go through the motions of drawing. Ostensibly, Rita was posing on a chair on the podium, but in reality she was chatting with each student. It was like shift hand-over in a factory, as I took over the donkey from the previous student.

  “Is it a minimalist concept?” I joked as I looked at a blank sheet of white cartridge paper on the drawing board. The previous students had simply sat and chatted with Rita; it was Christmas after all, and this arrangement suited me. So we talked about Christmas, families, and holidays, as if we were two people sitting together on the bus. It seems bizarre, but we were able to small-talk and have a casual conversation while she sat opposite me, stark naked. After studying the same figure twice a week for a full term it seemed perfectly natural. Neither my eyes nor my mind were tempted to wander. I am reminded of the old saying that the only true test of a true intellectual is someone who can listen to the whole of Rossini’s ‘William Tell Overture’ without once thinking of ‘The Lone Ranger’. During our conversation, Rita told me that she was looking forward to coming to the party that night and wearing her brand new Christmas dress for the first time.

  “I won’t recognise you with your clothes on,” I quipped, thinking I was being devastatingly witty.

  Rita raised her eyebrows and replied with a sardonic smile, “Nobody has ever said that to me before.”

  Her demeaning tone made me cringe for being so obvious.

  “Sorry,” I groaned as I raised my hands in acknowledgement. Just as we were laughing the studio door started to open slowly. I assumed it was the next student arriving to take over, but then some bloke I had never seen before stood there, ready to walk in. I jumped up and made a sort of traffic-cop halt-sign before he got beyond the privacy partition (known forevermore as Mr. Sheils’ partition).

  “Sorry Sir, you cannot come in here. These are private parts,” I blurted out, too late to cover up my Freudian slip.

  He was about six feet tall and unshaven, wearing a flat cap, donkey jacket, jeans and steel-toe-capped boots.

  “Sorry mate,” he said sharply, “I’m looking for Rita.”

  I glanced towards Rita, who looked taken aback. She silently and exaggeratedly mouthed the words “It’s my husband,” as she quickly got up off the chair and put on her dressing gown.

  I stood there transfixed as if I was on stage in a West End farce; husband entering via French windows and maids disappearing through the back door: something like ‘Run for Your Wife’ or ‘When Did You Last See Your Trousers?’ You get the picture. Although everything was perfectly innocent and above-board, I felt as though I had been caught with my pants down. Thoughts flashed through my mind: ‘Does he know that his wife is a professional nude model? Has he come to confront her? Where is the rest of the class?’ and, not least, ‘He is a big, rough-looking bugger wearing steel-toe-capped boots’.

  It reminded me of the joke about a bloke who had picked up a woman one night and she had taken him back to her bungalow. As they were in bed together, they heard the front door open.

  “What was that?” he whispered, startled.

  “Oh no,” she blustered, “it’s my husband.”

  “Your bloody husband... You never said you were married.”

  As he frantically hopped about, dressing on the run, he demanded, “Where’s your back door?”

  “We haven’t got a back door.”

  So he just looked around and said, “Well, where do you want one?”

  Rita nodded to assure me that everything was okay, as I sat down, relieved, at the donkey and beckoned her husband to enter the studio. It was a slightly awkward atmosphere. He told her that he had just got home from work and had lost his house keys. She went into the small changing room to get her keys from her handbag and, while he was waiting, he decided to have a look at my drawing. He sidled over and peeked over the drawing board. He looked nonplussed when he was confronted by a vast sheet of virgin-white cartridge paper. There followed an interminable silence as he eyed me up and down suspiciously, and then looked ba
ck at the paper. He leaned forward to within six inches of the surface, narrowed his eyes and looked at the paper contemplatively as if he was scrutinising the texture of paint on a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh. Very slowly, he turned his head towards me, and said condescendingly, “Don’t tell me... It’s a polar bear in a blizzard.”

  “How did you guess?” I spluttered, ready to enter into some light-hearted banter. However, I must have momentarily misread the situation, as his facial expression remained frozen and unsmiling. He frowned, obviously wondering why there was no drawing on the paper, then looked at me and shook his head slightly but didn’t say anything. There weren’t even any marks from erasing, so I couldn’t use that as an excuse. I started to ramble incoherently telling him the rest of the class were putting up Christmas decorations, and we were taking turns drawing, but it was one of those situations where it would have been better just to shut up. The more I made excuses, the less convincing I was. I should have followed the old adage: when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. Finally, I started to suggest that my pencil had broken as I held it up to his face. But all I managed to whimper was, “I haven’t got any lead in my pencil.”

  A Skeleton isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for (After) Life

  So the ‘skeleton-crew’ of students ensured that Rita would be paid for the Friday afternoon life-drawing session. Talking of skeletons, that leads me seamlessly - or clumsily - into my Christmas adventures with ‘Myrtle Byrtle’. The large studio at the college had a resident skeleton, which was suspended on a stand by a metal bracket fixed onto the crown of the skull. The only places you are likely to come across a skeleton casually standing in the corner of a room are in chiropractors’ treatment rooms, medical schools, a fairground ghost train, and, perhaps, one still hanging on the phone to a call-centre in India while listening to classical music. You know the ones: you are told that the conversation is ‘being recorded for training porpoises’. Is there no limit to human ingenuity? Perhaps it is the same technique that Taiwanese fishermen use for training cormorants.

  Commercial skeletons are usually made of gleaming white plastic or a cut-price version in cardboard. The crucial difference with the one at St. Helens Art College was that it was real. It was the colour of nicotine-stained teeth. It reminded me of the one standing next to a seven-foot stuffed grizzly bear in ‘Steptoe and Son’. Perhaps it was that one, and Mr. Shiels really was Albert Steptoe. Gerry told us that the skeleton was a female, probably of Egyptian origin, and had been called ‘Myrtle Byrtle’ for as long as anyone could remember, for reasons that are lost in time.

  We made accurate anatomical studies of the skeleton in order to develop an understanding of underlying bone structures when life-drawing. The best way to appreciate how anything is constructed is to make an analytical drawing. To reduce a subject to its basic geometric form is the secret to accurate drawing. This was the basis of French painter Paul Cezanne’s work in the 19th Century, which led to branches of the 20th Century modern art.

  During the term, I had enjoyed studying the skeleton, and I was part-way through a particular collection of drawings as Christmas approached. I asked Gerry if it would be possible to borrow ‘Myrtle’ to take home to do some work during the holiday.

  He thought it was a rather macabre request, asking, “Who do you live with, the Addams family?”

  He referred me to Mr. Gill, who was surprised by my request. He seemed reluctant, saying that ‘Myrtle’ hadn’t been off the premises since she first arrived about thirty years earlier. I took my sketchbook to my meeting with him, so that I could demonstrate that it was a serious request, and he glanced at my series of skeleton studies. I outlined my ideas for developing these drawings into future paintings and managed to persuade him to give me permission. As I mentioned earlier, when I was asking Mr. Gill to agree to the Christmas party, he can be rather pedantic. He was a belt and braces man. He sat me down and gave me a very serious lecture on my responsibilities when taking out a real skeleton. He stressed this point by suggesting that even if I lost a small part of ‘Myrtle’s’ anatomy, like a little finger, it could spark off a murder inquiry. They were his exact words. Not something which had remotely crossed my mind, but I nodded seriously; anything to obtain permission.

  On the Friday afternoon, after we had finished preparing the room for the Christmas party, everyone went home to get ready. Jeff and I usually walked, but, with the inclement weather and it being end of term, the three of us decided to catch the bus. That’s me, Jeff, and Myrtle Byrtle. The last time she will have been on public transport was probably a felucca on the Nile. During the week, I had experimented with different ways of transporting the skeleton. I finally decided that the best way was to tuck her knees up to her chin in a sitting position, with her arms folded across her shins. She was wrapped in a sheet, and I was able to carry her under my left arm while carrying my portfolio and paint box in my right hand. Someone suggested that ‘Myrtle’ could ride on my back, piggy-back style, but I decided against it in view of the fact that my walk to the bus stop took me right past the police station.

  At about five o’clock the town centre was packed with Christmas shoppers and groups of workers pub-crawling through flurries of snow. As we walked across Victoria Square, there was a great festive atmosphere with the sound of crisp snow under our feet and the slushy sounds as cars and buses went by. The street decorations and multi-coloured lights on the huge Christmas tree in front of the Town Hall heightened our party mood. I felt like James Stewart as George Bailey, walking through snowy Bedford Falls in the classic Christmas film ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’. Then I remembered that I had a human skeleton tucked under my arm; so, make that Norman Bates in ‘Psycho’. As Jeff and I stood in the bus stop queue I checked to see if ‘Myrtle’ was still secure. Not surprisingly, all the buses were heaving with shoppers. Jeff and I were the last passengers allowed on board by the conductor, who directed us upstairs. It was a bit of a struggle getting up the steps, burdened as I was with a portfolio, paint box and, not forgetting, Myrtle. Heaven forbid! Could you imagine leaving a skeleton on the bus? Mr. Gill would have had a heart attack, not to mention the person who happened to find it. It could have been Police Cadet Bill Fryer’s first murder case. The only two vacant seats were separate. Jeff took the first seat, and I made my way along the aisle to a seat further along. The bus was not only full, but seemed excessively crowded. Everyone was wearing bulky winter clothes, and most had Christmas shopping, either on their knees or on the floor at their feet. I sat down next to a lady who was perhaps in her late 40s. She was looking out at the falling snow through a small circle of clear glass, she had wiped with her gloved hand, on the steamy windows. She shuffled in her seat as if to make room for me; not that she could create any more space, but it was the kind of gesture everyone does naturally on buses, or trains or even park benches as a form of territorial concession. It is a human-trait first identified by Dr. Desmond Morris in his book ‘The Naked Ape’. So, there I was, surrounded by a mass of humanity, all clutching bags, gifts, packages, rolls of wrapping paper, even a tied-up Christmas tree, and children going home with their mummies... as was I.

  I sat with my left arm firmly clasped around Myrtle and my right hand steadying my portfolio in the aisle, while keeping my paint-box gripped between my feet. The conductor appeared at the top of the stairs and started to make his way along the bus, collecting fares. My money was in the right-hand pocket of my jeans; so I had to contort myself into a few positions as I lifted my overcoat, balanced my portfolio against the seat, straightened my right leg without knocking over my paint-box and got my right hand in my pocket. This caused me to shift about in my seat, but eventually I managed to pull a handful of coins out of my pocket. I thought I would just hold out the money in my palm and let the conductor take the fare since my left arm was somewhat preoccupied.

  At that moment, the lady sitting next to me let out an audible
gasp and her whole body seemed to stiffen as if frozen. This time I didn’t need Desmond Morris to explain her body language. I quickly glanced to my left and saw that a skeletal arm had worked itself loose and fallen onto the lady’s right leg, with Myrtle’s hand folded around her knee. I gave her an embarrassed, apologetic thin smile as I gently lifted the arm, which caused the hand to flop forward with an eerie rattle. I carefully placed it back under the sheet and secured it as tightly as I could, under the circumstances.

  “Blackbrook please,” I said to the conductor as matter-of-factly as I could manage, and held out my hand for him to take the fare. I put the change in my top pocket; I couldn’t risk disturbing Myrtle again.

  I said earlier that the lady next to me could not create any more space between us. Well, I was wrong. By now she had moved as near to the window as is possible without actually climbing out. My thought process went something like this: how do I explain to a total stranger on the bus that I just happen to be carrying a human skeleton under my arm? Do I laugh it off? Do I ignore it? What if she screams? No, she wouldn’t risk doing that; after all, she doesn’t want to upset the mass murderer sitting next to her. Just as all these thoughts were going through my head, Jeff turned to catch my attention, blissfully unaware of my predicament. I think he was trying to let me know that our stop was coming up soon. All I did was smile to him. A big mistake! The terrified lady must have interpreted this as the cruel leering grin on the face of the insane serial killer. It was now too late to apologise or explain, so as the bus stopped I made my way carefully, very carefully, along the crowded bus and down the steps. As I got off the bus I felt a pair of eyes boring into me. I looked over my shoulder to see the face of the poor, terrified lady looking at me through the circular porthole of the steamed-up window. It is a vision that has haunted me ever since, so goodness knows how she must have felt with her Myrtle memory.