SEVEN DAYS (23 page)

Andre gave her his arm and she slipped hers in his again.

She felt protected by him. He had the body of a gladiator crossed with a teen idol pop star. Quite a combination.

As they walked, their steps fell into a natural rhythm and she allowed her body to press against his. He swept her along then, forsaking being arm in arm for one big arm around her waist, proprietarial and protective all at once.

No hard feelings. He knew how not to bear a grudge.

It was at that moment that Mark appeared, walking alone across the courtyard. He was surprised to see them but not as surprised as Judy was to see him. Instinctively, she removed herself from Andre's grip, causing him to protest, hurt.

On their stroll through the dark garden, winding down towards the mansion, she had wondered what it might be like to bump into Mark and Maggie. She had expected that she would flaunt Andre; maybe drape herself over him. Instead, she wanted to curl up like an autumn leaf and disappear.

“Hi,” Andre said.

Mark said nothing. He was staring from one of them to the other.

“Hi,” said Judy, weakly. In some part of her mind, she knew, this was what she had wanted. She had wanted to be seen. She wanted him to know that she was desirable and that she didn't need him, that if he chose to ignore her in favour of Maggie it would be his own loss.

But now...

“Party's over,” Mark said. “Get some rest.” He kept his voice even. “First day of classes tomorrow.”

“Of course,” said Andre.

“Okay,” said Judy.

They walked away under Mark's gaze.

Judy felt awful, with the impression that she was in trouble with the teacher. She defended herself against feeling depressed by turning the feeling into anger.

Two can play at this game,
she thought, but, in truth, her heart wasn't in it.

“Tomorrow will be awkward,” Judy said when Mark was gone.

“Now I know why you didn't want me on the hill,” Andre said. “I saw the way you looked at him just then. Why didn’t you tell me you wanted him? I hope things will be okay between us all. We have to live together for the rest of the week.”

Judy smiled sadly. Was it really so obvious that she had fallen for Mark?

“You saw the way I looked at him,” she said, “but did you see the way he glared at me?”

Chapter Seven: Monday—Life Drawing

Henry David Thoreau:
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”

As scheduled, the students met in the studio.

Try as she might, Judy couldn't keep her eyes off her so-called roommate, who, as far as she was aware, had not returned to the bedroom the entire night.

“What now?” Maggie asked when she caught Judy staring. “Are you going to draw me?”

“Draw!” Simon said and pulled a paintbrush out of his belt as though it was a revolver.

“Don't be a fool, Billy,” someone added.

Judy didn't know whether they had defused the confrontation deliberately or whether it had been a happy coincidence, but Judy was grateful and returned to examining her shoes until she heard footsteps approaching along the corridor and a moment later Mark strode in.

He looked as if he hadn't slept and within a few seconds it was clear that he was not his jovial self.

“Hung over?” Bernard asked.

Mark launched straight into his introduction to today's workshops without answering. He normally responded playfully to ironic questions and even heckling, but today he ploughed on, sounding much less like himself and more like some professor who had delivered this talk many times using the same time-worn notes.

Not only did he not make eye-contact with Judy, but he avoided the gaze of the rest of the class too.

Maggie looked at Bernard and she exaggerated a shrug: “Not my fault I kept him up late. Oh, yes, actually, it is my fault. Lucky me.”

Though his usual style of teaching, which he had once described as 'anti-teaching', made some of the class nervous or even angry, they found this 'invisible lectern' approach tedious.

Judy didn't much care about how he delivered his message, only that it was over soon.

As she thought this, Andre entered the room and the tension she felt tripled. She was sure that she had gone bright red. Andre's eyes sought her out immediately upon entering the room. Even before seeing Mark, he had looked for her.

“You're late,” Mark said.

Andre appeared to be about to say something about Mark always being late, but his mouth snapped shut.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Get your clothes off,” Mark said, “and sit down.”

Andre stood in the corner and removed his coat, shirt, shoes and socks.

“Chair,” Mark said, pointing, then continued with great fluidity, but little emotion, his speech on the fundamentals of life drawing.

“Before you can draw,” Mark said, “you have to be able to see. Feeling? That comes later. Feeling can be dangerous. Feeling too deeply too quickly can get you into trouble.”

Mark was looking directly at Judy now.

“Find the truth in the thing you're looking at,” he said. “Don't see what you expect to see. Really look at the thing in front of you. It might surprise you. It might disappoint you. But at least you won't be fooled by it.”

Andre returned to the middle of the room with a wooden chair.

“Trousers,” Mark said impatiently.

The women in the room smiled. Simon licked his lips.

Andre slipped out of his khaki trousers, revealing a pair of black briefs beneath. Bending to remove his trousers, the class was privileged to a view of a perfect male bum. And when he turned, they were treated to the sight of what appeared to be an enormous package.

“Oh my God,” someone exclaimed in a whisper and there was a murmur of laughter.

“Off,” Mark said.

Andre slipped his briefs down over his thighs and stepped out of them. The room was already quiet, but now it fell silent.

This boy was indeed beautiful.

“Sit,” Mark said, frustrated at giving him instructions, and then he got up to position the model. He angled him so that his legs were apart and so that he was directly facing Judy.

“Hold that pose,” Mark said.

Andre gave Judy a Gallic shrug and an apologetic grin.

“Don't move,” Mark snapped.

The tension in the room was in part because of Andre's wondrous nakedness—Simon was failing to keep his cool and Kevin caught his girlfriend fanning herself, which she attempted to explain away as a normal, meaningless human gesture, before doubling over with a fit of the giggles—and in part because of Mark's odd behaviour, or rather, because his behaviour was not as odd as usual today.

Everybody had a supply of sketch paper on their easel and pencils of various weights to hand.

“Don't worry,” he said. “You're going to get to draw today. I don't expect you to snap your pencils in two.”

There was good-humoured laughter and relief, but Mark didn't join in.

First, he had them close their eyes and focus on their breathing. During this time, Judy and Andre regarded each other, embarrassed, while Mark walked around the room, guiding a brief meditation.

Andre sat god-like, like some marble creation. His only movement was his great chest rising and falling and the agonised look on his face. He was cringing whenever Mark came near him.

“Keep your head up,” Mark told him.

“I didn't know,” Andre said.

“Didn't know what?” said Mark.

“How you felt about her,” said Andre.

Mark considered his next words carefully, glancing briefly at Judy.

“You still don't,” Mark said.

Before either Andre or Judy could speak again, Mark was addressing the room as a whole:

“Let go of any tension in your body,” he said. “Relax your shoulders. Breathe deeply and let it go.”

Unknown to the others, Mark then addressed Judy directly.

“Let go of any emotional conflicts you might have. If you're feeling angry or guilty or a little bit stupid...”

Judy scowled.

“...let it slide away.”

Judy openly glared at him. He didn't need to be so mean and he had started it.

“Let it go,” Mark said. “You don't need this extra baggage. You're better of without it. Get on with your life.”

Bernard peeked.

“Am I missing something?” he said. “What’s going on?”

Caught out, Mark continued with the meditation, telling them to imagine that they were back in their safe place.

Judy couldn't perform this exercise. There was nowhere left to hide. Everywhere that she went, she was there and Mark was there, too, glaring at her, accusing her, though he was no angel himself.

Finally, Mark counted to ten to bring them from their place of quiet contemplation back to their tasks in the studio.

He set them several timed exercises, the first of which was to draw Andre without looking at their pencil or the paper. They were not to even glance at the drawing in progress. Their eyes should rest on Andre's body the entire time.

Mark set the timer for five minutes and positioned himself behind Judy. The back of her neck tingled.

Her pencil was trembling.

“Look at him!” Mark snapped.

Judy did so.

“I can't do this,” Andre said and stood. He pulled on a dressing gown, grabbed his clothes and strode out of the room, apologising to everyone.

Everyone looked at Mark, shocked.

Judy was pleased that he was gone, though appalled by the circumstances under which it had happened.

“I'll sit,” Mark offered and plonked himself in the chair. He positioned himself so that he was staring at Judy. “Look at me,” he said. “Not the paper. Not the pen. Look me in the eye. Do you see me?”

“Of course,” Judy said.

“Really?” said Mark. “Then draw what you see.”

Over the course of forty-five minutes they created almost a dozen sketches, one after the other. He instructed them to use their weaker hand, and to create another with eyes closed, and then another using only vertical or horizontal lines. Mark imposed all manner of constraints upon them in order to get them to let go of their expectations.

As the class walked around the room and looked at each other's interpretations of the subject under the strain of various challenges, their mouths beamed and their eyes shone.

“Learn anything today?” Mark asked Judy.

“Yes,” she said. “Nobody's perfect. Not even you.”

After this, he left her alone for the rest of the day. He was polite and no longer unkind, though she could see that it took him a great effort to be so. Every time he interacted with her he had to move away from her, crossing the room or even leaving entirely.

If he really had slept with Maggie, they were doing a good job of keeping a lid on it. While Maggie remained flirtatious, they seemed no more nor less intimate than they had been the night before, whereas several people had already asked her what was going on between she and Andre.

Maybe,
she thought,
god forbid, but maybe, I owe Mark another apology.

That was a terrible situation to be in. She was so used to being right about everything, it was difficult to accept even the possibility that she had made so many mistakes about him.

She needed the courage to go after what she wanted, not what she thought was available. It was a thing easier said than done, though.

She was about to ask if she could speak to him alone when his phone rang and he took the call rather than talk with her.

“Monday?” Mark said. “As in today? As in this afternoon? No, of course I didn't forget.”

He hung up the phone with a haunted look on his face, which gradually cleared as he formed a plan.

“Ten more minutes to finish,” he said, “and then we have a surprise excursion.”

* * * *

Mark attempted to call Andre, but his friend, or ex-friend, wasn't answering his phone, so Mark impressed everyone by driving the minibus himself.

“What are you doing here?” Maggie asked when she saw that Judy was sitting on the back row, as far from Mark as she could get.

“Change of scenery,” Judy said.

They alighted at a nursery school about thirty minutes later and a similar performance to what happened at Gorodka happened here. Mark stood on the doorstep, gesticulating, making grand gestures with both arms, while the woman in the doorway glared at the minibus passengers—who waved back—frowning and shaking her head.

No. No. No.

Eventually, Mark elicited acquiescence from her and he quickly instructed the group to get into the building before she changed her mind.

The classroom was as light as their studio, with colourful drawings on the walls on huge black sheets of paper. The kids who had done these were sitting around four tables pushed together in the centre of the room and they were drawing and painting while wearing multicoloured aprons. They looked to be about three or four years old and they were certainly not 'afraid of the canvas'.