Life Class (28 page)

Glancing at her feet, he grimaced. ‘You have to watch out when you’re walking along here.’

‘The really annoying thing is, I know that. I live at Stowbridge. But I was distracted by the …’

‘The bloody wildlife. I heard.’ He gave a slight smile.

‘I love it really. It’s one of the delights of moving back here.’

He said nothing, just looked at her as if waiting for her to say more.

‘After the rain this morning, it’s turned into a lovely day. Cold, but with a real promise of spring in the air,’ she continued after a pause, relieved at the inconsequentiality of the conversation but at a loss to know what else to say. Looking down, she wiped her foot over the grassy verge. ‘Odd, the way we keep bumping into one another.’ Then she looked up. ‘Weren’t you teaching today?’

‘Monday, Tuesday, and Friday mornings,’ he said.

‘Oh. In fact. I shouldn’t be off.’ Her foot continued, almost unconsciously, to paw the ground, like the hoof of a restless horse. ‘I usually work on a Wednesday, but …’ Shut up, Dory. He’s not interested in why you swapped shifts this week, Just say,
well, cheerio then
and be on your way, or bite the bullet? What is the worst he could say? ‘Actually, it’s a coincidence seeing you now. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. About the house …’ He looked puzzled. Good start. ‘About
your
house. Kitesnest?’

‘Damn!’ He clamped his hand to his face, then let it fall. ‘I’d almost forgotten. Sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind.’ She could well imagine what he’d had on his mind. ‘At the start of the year, the estate agent kept pestering me but I’m afraid they got the rough edge of my tongue. I told them I didn’t want to keep hearing from them every two minutes, and that I’d let them know.’ He looked at her with a slight frown. ‘You must have wondered what was going on.’

‘I’d assumed you were offended by my offer.’

His brows drew further together, ridging the space between them into deep, vertical corrugations. ‘I was bloody angry at the time! But, I don’t have much, well,
any
experience of house buying and selling. Maybe I was being unrealistic. The estimate was quoted to me well over a year ago, immediately after my father died. It sounded good. Perhaps the market’s dropped since then.’ Stefan pushed open the gate in the chain-link fence. ‘Come through, this is my workshop. I’ll clean your boot for you. Would you like a coffee?’

She was surprised but pleased by his offer. ‘Thank you, that’s kind.’

‘It’s only instant and I’ve no sugar, I’m afraid, but I’ve got milk. I may even be able to find a biscuit.’

‘No problem. I don’t take sugar and don’t want a biscuit.’ Dory followed him through the gate. She knew immediately, and with a sinking heart, which was his workshop. Outside the breezeblock structure there were several sculptures, still in the raw clay state, standing on wooden boards. But they were the kind of thing she hated. There was a scarecrow, over a metre high – his plate-like hat forming what she assumed was a birdbath or table. There was also a large boot, its opening splayed out for planting, and beside these two there was a shambling gardener pushing a wheelbarrow – again, the barrow seemed to have been designed as a receptacle for planting.

She racked her brain for something to say about them, eventually coming up with, ‘Do you fire them yourself? Do you have a kiln here?’

Stefan looked nonplussed. ‘These would explode. Apart from the inevitable air pockets, there’s a metal armature inside them.’

Dory blushed at her ignorance. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about … My mother would have loved these.’

‘Meaning
you
hate them?’ He grimaced. ‘They’re not what I’d choose to make.’

‘So, why?’

‘There are lots of people like your mother. These are just a bread-and-butter job. A local firm commissioned me. They mass-produce garden ornaments in a kind of stone cement aggregate. I had a specific brief. Ultimately, these will have to be made in sections, but I’m waiting for the firm’s buyer to come, which is why they’re assembled. Once I’ve got the go-ahead I’ll make the moulds, and from them I’ll make casts. I sell them to the client who will use my casts as templates.’

‘It’s a bit long-winded.’

‘Not as time-consuming as the lost-wax process for casting bronzes. But I don’t mind if my heart’s in the job. Have a look at this. It was more fun to do than those monstrosities.’ He went into the workshop, coming out with a plaster bas-relief set on an oblong base. It was the face of a bearded man, larger than full-size. The expression – an exaggerated grimace – turned him into a Da-Vinci-style grotesque. His beard and hair were stylised into an ornamental border entwined with sculpted leaves and tendrils.

‘A green man!’ Now Dory was able express her true enthusiasm. ‘He’s lovely. I can see you enjoyed doing him. Isn’t it fascinating that pagan images like this were so often incorporated into the architecture of early Christian churches?’

‘Placating the peasants,’ he said. The T-shirt he wore was so faded and grubby it was hard to tell whether the original colour was once white, grey, or blue. Did he not feel the cold, she wondered, her gaze riveted on his exposed skin which showed no trace of goose bumps. She briefly imagined those sinewy, muscled arms, those hands, moulding the clay, modelling, sculpting it into the figure of a boy. ‘So what about the bronzes in your house?’ she said, dragging her eyes away from his bare arms. ‘Can’t you stick to doing that sort of thing? Produced using the lost … what was it?’

‘Lost-wax process. An ancient technique, but no one has thought of anything better. Of the work in my house it’s only the Icarus series that’s cast in bronze.’

‘Icarus! I imagined they depicted the fall of an angel.’

‘If you look, you’ll see the wings are attached to the arms with straps.’

‘I’m so unobservant. I didn’t even notice a difference between those three sculptures and the others in your house.’

‘You’d notice a difference if you tried to lift them. The bronze is colder to the touch and much heavier. The others have been cold cast. They’re far cheaper to produce because they’re made from resin mixed with bronze filings to give the right patina. Look, come in, I’ll make that coffee.’ He went into the workshop and picked up a plastic bottle of milk, unscrewing the cap. Dory stood at the door. The disgust on his face after sniffing the milk required no explanation.

‘Black coffee is fine. I suppose it’s all that solid bronze that makes them expensive to produce?’

‘Solid?’ He half laughed. ‘No. It’s the complicated process as much as the price of the material which makes casting in bronze expensive. The metal is only a skin over investment plaster.’

‘But …’ She looked around for specialised equipment. ‘How do you do that?’

‘It’s not done by me
here!
It’s done at a foundry. I’ve worked in a metal foundry myself, so when I’m having a piece cast I’ll go along and oversee it, but …’ Stefan scratched his head as if needing a moment to marshal his thoughts.

How thick his hair was, despite the multiple ragged layers. She noticed the threads of glinting red illuminated by the sun. He still held the bottle of sour milk.

‘Basically, for a simple sculpture, a mould is made at the plaster-cast stage. Liquid wax is poured into this mould, and is swirled around to thickly coat every surface. When it’s solidified, the investment plaster is introduced into the central space. After the mould is broken off, bronze keys are pushed through the wax and into the plaster to hold it in place.’ He turned away and upended the milk bottle in the sink and turned on the tap. ‘Then, extra wax branches are attached, curving from various points around the piece to its base.’

Had the idea not already been planted in her mind, would she have thought the explanatory swooping gestures he made in the air rather camp?

‘The final, very tough, ceramic mould is created in several layers, coating the whole lot,’ he went on. ‘It’s then fired in a kiln up to temperatures of a thousand degrees Fahrenheit or more.’

‘Surely the wax would melt?’

He frowned. ‘That’s the point. It completely vaporises. It is there simply to create a void. That’s why it’s called the
lost-wax
process. When the molten bronze is poured in, it occupies this hollow space between the investment plaster and the ceramic mould, creating a replica of the original when it’s cooled. Plus, of course, the vents and sprues …’

‘The what?’ Her grasp of what he’d said so far might be tenuous but at least it had been in a language she knew. Stefan had lifted the kettle and was weighing it in his hand, as if judging how much water was already in it, before putting it back on its stand.

‘Sorry. When the wax disappears from those curved wax branches, the space they occupy in the mould is left like hollow channels. The molten metal is poured through the sprues into the mould and the vents allow the hot gases to escape. After the piece has cooled and solidified, they remain, like irregularly-shaped metal cup handles. They have to be broken off and then fettled – filed – back.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry. I’ve tried to simplify it but I guess it’s hard to envisage.’

‘How much does it cost you to have a sculpture cast in bronze?’

‘Depends on the size. But if I could sell them, the cost to me wouldn’t matter. I occasionally sell a piece but it’s not a reliable income. People might like what I do but understandably, no one wants to pay what I need to charge … thousands in the case of the Icarus series … unless they’ve heard of the artist. Gives them a sense of security, I suppose. It’s more of a risk buying from an unknown.’

‘If the only reason they’re buying is as an investment.’ Dory said. ‘Anyway, the only artists universally known by the general public are people like Emin, Hirst, and Gormley. What are they called?’

‘The Young British Artists? Not so young any more, conceptual artists. Not suitable for the average suburban dwelling and not exactly affordable.’

‘And not everyone’s cup of tea.’

‘Or coffee,’ he added, a wry twist to his mouth as he picked up the jar. ‘Intrinsic value, technique, beauty, they no longer count for anything. It’s all about conveying a message.’ He stood stock still, the jar of instant coffee apparently forgotten. ‘The art establishment has become a self-congratulatory clique, producing pretentious, self-indulgent …’ His frown deepened. Then he shook his head. ‘There isn’t a word …’

‘I just trod in some?’ Dory suggested. He gave a short, barking laugh.

‘You said it, not me. But that’s patently not what they’re aiming for.’

‘Is it maybe a kind of visual philosophy?’

Stefan nodded. ‘Substitute “Jokes” for “Philosophy” and I might agree with you. What you find yourself trying to evaluate at art shows these days is often more akin to stage sets than to art as
I
recognise it. There’s little or no craft in what’s produced. It’s all about the subtext. And the really, really sad thing is that most art graduates seem convinced that’s the only way to go.’ At last, he’d turned his attention to the coffee jar but the lid was not coming off without a struggle. Eventually, he picked up a craft knife and slit the plastic seal. ‘They abandon aesthetics for the golden grail of self-promotion. It’s not enough to work at something you love, to refine your craft, to explore the limits of your own creativity. Everyone wants to be a star. First, find the rich patron. The media attention and the big bucks will surely follow.’

‘Blame celebrity culture.’

He nodded, his mouth twisting down at the corners. ‘I daresay I’m an old fogey like my father. But don’t trust what I say, what any artist says, about art. We all talk drivel.’

Deciding not to pursue his final comment, Dory said, ‘But you have to earn a living. And you evidently believe there
is
a gap in the market for beautiful, figurative sculpture on a human scale. It’s how you exploit it that’s the key. So how do you do that? How do you promote yourself?’ She still stood outside, looking through the open door to the interior of the workshop. It was tiny compared to the barn at Kitesnest House. Seeing the collection of disparate objects lined up along the top of the wall, a memory of the scowling, dark-haired boy floated into her mind again. The skull he’d shown her that day in his garden was possibly up there, amongst the other objects. She looked back at the boy, grown into a man. He still frowned, this time at her question.

‘Promote myself? Ineffectively, apparently. I have a sign up at the entrance to Wyvern Mill.’ He was now vigorously rubbing at a mug with a tea towel, as if trying to remove the stains. Dory recognised it and its companion as the ones he’d bought that day in Strouley. ‘A couple of local art & craft shops have taken some smaller pieces, plus leaflets with my contact details and photos of the larger sculptures. I put some adverts into the local newspapers. I also spoke to their editorial departments about doing a news item. You know the sort of thing, “After x many years local man comes home and sets up as a sculptor.” But all that was in the first flush of optimism, when I’d just moved back here.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Nothing happened. Oh, I had some interviews, one of the papers even sent a photographer round, but I ended up as a small paragraph and a fuzzy picture at the bottom of page five, two months later. The double-page spread was devoted to someone who’d caught a big fish! Enthusiastic hordes
did not
beat a path to my door. All I had was a resounding silence. One or two of the pieces in the shops sold, but generally I’ve got the message loud and clear that my stuff is too big and too expensive. As for earning a living? Why do you think I’m teaching and making garden gnomes?’ He spooned coffee granules into the mugs. ‘Look, come inside. I have two chairs, as well as the two mugs, in the vain hope I might be entertaining clients.’ He looked up, eyebrows raised. ‘Next time I’ll try and remember to double-check the milk before I issue invitations.’

‘I won’t come in.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘My boot …!’

He continued to look at her, then shook his head and smiled. She felt a flush of warmth surge through her.

‘The bloody wildlife. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten. Why don’t you take the boot off and hop over to the chair? I’ll clean it for you in a minute.’