Still Life

Life sculpture. Does that sound sinister to you?

Trevor worries about it, thinks people might have visions of carving into human flesh, making vests of lady-skin like Buffalo Bill. He hasn’t Hopkins’ presence, couldn’t be Lecter to anybody’s Starling. He’s not impressive enough, definitely not larger than life.

He says (when anyone talks to him), that he sees his life going past frame-by-frame. It’s a small joke, so he coughs a little laugh from the side of his mouth. Spectacle frames, he means, glasses, but he loves films, going to the cinema, it’s his passion. In the thick popcorn darkness he can tip his seat up, perch on the narrow top, and nobody notices.

He takes comfort from Michael J. Fox, Tom Cruise, but when he gets to the lab in the morning, and the turned-up hem of his white coat skims his turn-ups, when he steps on that special baby step so he can reach the lens grinder, and nobody says anything, but he knows they look, he can’t help feeling like singing “Hey ho”, or turning orange as an Umpalumpa.

Trevor’s not a dwarf or a midget. Everything’s perfectly in proportion (some of him’s bigger than that, he’d like to tell friends with that same small cough). If he’d only grown to five foot tall, he’d be a happy man, or if he’d had the good fortune to fancy the Kylie type … but Trevor’s always had a horror of people talking about “that funny little couple” and steered clear of short women.

It’s girls like Sandra Bullock in Speed that turn him on, lean, athletic … Demi Moore …

Ah, yes, Demi … that’s how it all started. …

You must have seen Ghost. Everyone has.

Do you remember that scene with the clay? In the half-dark, Demi at her potter’s wheel, turning a vase, Unchained Melody sugaring the background. Swayze comes up behind her, hands over hers, close, closer, arse to groin. Fingers mould, smooth, and the clay turns to a column, thickens between their conjoined fingers, grows, erupts uncontrollably, collapses into a ruined flaccid heap, spinning uselessly. They turn to one another, twining, slippery as mud-eels and … miracle … as they begin the old in-out, their faces are suddenly clean, shining, unsplattered.

Haven’t you ever noticed that? Trevor did. It’s the fantasy that took him through five years of evening classes, exams, teaching certificates. And now he’s ready to rumble.

A warm Thursday in September, seven-thirty. Belldale Junior School. The art-room stretches across the top floor, long windows green with child-freckled playing fields. The air is bubble-gum sweet with sugar paper, fixative, gum; sour with unhung rags and a faint whiff of urine.

“Ceramics for Beginners,” he’s called it in the end. He’s registered with the Council, printed off fliers and taken them by hand to all the local libraries.

Tonight’s been a rush. White coat off, drive home, supper, jeans-and-jumper, on with the yellow shop-coat, clay streaks worn deep into the fabric. It used to belong to his granddad, Arthur (’alf-a-pint). Granddad used to wear it Ronnie Barker style, turning round the closed sign on the shop each night, nattering. He’d think ceramics classes were right poncy, grown men mucking about making mud-pies.

Granddad never had a problem. Maybe people were smaller then. He fell for Gran at school before they’d fully grown, and clocked up fifty years together. Trevor’s over forty now himself, ekes out his days grinding lenses, sharpening reality for other people. He spends his nights in celluloid fantasies through a glass screen, so self-aware that he can’t even see himself as himself in any of those dreams. He’d climb up on a barstool, little legs flailing, reach up for a kiss, be overlooked, unfancied. So he, as himself, looks on.

First lesson tonight, no potter’s wheel. He’s going to teach them the basics, what they’re really dealing with – the clayness of clay, the feeling for it. Journeys up and down four flights of iron staircases, lugging, carrying. He sets up the tables as he’s seen them in his head for weeks. Five beginners, five work-places.

And him, in the middle.

Seven-fifty. It’s a junior school and the chairs are child-sized, low. These normal-sized pupils of his will sit with their knees around their ears. Two flights down to the staff room, and Trevor puffs back up again, carrying chairs, two at a time.

Eight o’clock and they’ve arrived, seated, listening politely. Trevor perches on a desk in front of them. He aches for legs that cross elegantly, reach the ground. His swing stubbily like a child in a shopping-trolley seat, a garden gnome fishing.

He knows they’ve all come to learn different things, he tells them. But the basis of it all is in the clay. They’ve got to learn to deal with it, respect it, treat it with firmness. They’ll start by making name-tiles. It will help them get to know each other, and it’s simple to do. Square tiles with their initials and a representation of something that matters to them … a dog, tennis racquet, anything at all.

There’s Sukie Lee, twenties, petite, fall of shiny blue-black hair, her eyes stretched, half-hidden, lashless. She’s very pretty. Her child-hands seem weak as she picks up a lump of clay, lets it fall, prods it ineffectually.

“Pummel it,” he tells her. “You’ve got to show it who’s boss. Knock those bubbles out. Thump it.”

Martin comes over to her table. “Like this?” he asks, taking the clay from her, punching it into the board with a meaty fist, slamming it down again. He’s probably in his forties, sandy, slightly hangdog. He’s got an open farmer’s face that’s not seen enough sun.

Trevor slices through the clay with a cheese-wire. “Look at these air-spaces. If you don’t knock them down now they’ll expand in the kiln, explode, not just ruin your work, but take everyone else’s with it.”

Another forty-something, Alison, short dark hair. “Could you check mine, please?” Her voice is hesitant, quiet, not expecting an answer. He cuts the wire through.

“That’s good. Look, the rest of you. This is what we’re aiming for … smooth, no lumps, no bubbles. Well done.”

“I just kneaded it like bread.”

“Yes. It’s the same idea, using your knuckles.”

“Work it hard at the start, and you’ll get a better rise, an even texture.” Alison’s moon-face reddens; she bites her lip, turns back to her own space. She’s a big woman, not tall, but heavy-arsed, solid.

The other two are a couple, Bob and Carol. They’re serial evening class tasters, Monday to Friday, Sukie in the slot, learning in a packet – yoga, Italian-for-Intermediates, badminton, Feng Shui, and now ceramics for their “creative” night.

But no Demi.

If you had to pick one object to sum yourself up, something you could carve out of a two-inch slab of clay, what would you choose?

Trevor’s showing them what to do. He’s squared his tile off, smoothed it, bevelled the edges. The letter “B” is scripted, copied from a font book, Comic Sans. Now he’s got to show himself, distil the essence of his own life to his new pupils, to himself. He thinks of films, Monroe standing over the grating, Casablanca, Jabba the Hutt oozing slug-like across the tile … that wonderful flying bicycle crossing the full moon, a childlike flashback to a spinning wheel locked in the attic of a sinister castle, a motorbike leaping over barbed wire, Bullock on the speeding bus. Demi, slippery.

“I’m going to make a wheel. It’s a simple shape, easy to cut out, and it means a lot to me in different ways.”

Bob and Carol do half an elephant each. Bob laughs over being an elephant’s arse. They’ll hang the tiles together at home, picture consequences, a pair. Sukie carefully cuts out a rabbit.

Martin’s predictable with a seamed football, shows more imagination by netting the entire tile, making it into a goal, his “K” forming the post and cross-bar.

Alison has no idea what to do. “I’m totally blank,” she says. “I’m all of a panic when I even try to think about it.” Then she carries on, twines her tile in vine leaves, tendrils, moulded bunches of grapes, each grape formed separately, building the tile into a three-dimensional still-life. “Can I take some of this clay home? I’ve got this idea … or could you tell me where I can buy some?” She doesn’t look straight at him, a clenched rigidity in her hands as though they want to move with the words but she won’t let them.

“Yes. Keep it damp, in a plastic bag. If you let it dry out you can’t bring it back to life again.”

“Thank you.”

Ten o’clock. Hasn’t time flown. Martin carries all six chairs back down at once. They stack the equipment by Trevor’s car. Thank you, they say, and good night, see you next week.

Thursday, eight o’clock again. It’s an Indian summer, and the art-room’s like a greenhouse. Tonight they’re making coil pots. It’s simple, relaxing, children playing with plasticene worms. They coil mats for the base, smoothing, joining, fingers wet with clay slip.

He hears Martin and Alison talking softly as they work.

“… would’ve had our twentieth anniversary this year.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was rough. Breast cancer. One minute there’s this lump so small we can hardly feel it, the next all hell lets loose.”

“Must’ve been terrible for her.”

“I dunno. It was so quick. I’ll never know if it weren’t the doctors interfering that made it get so big. If they’d left well alone, whether it would just’ve stayed there, small-like. For years, mebbe.”

“I’m sure they only did their best.”

“Oh, we all did our best. T’weren’t good enough, mind. And at the end I broke this dish of hers, see. It was so precious to her … that’s why I’m here, and ’cause I promised her I wouldn’t stay at home and brood.”

They wrap more snakes around the sides, like grey Playskool stacking rings narrowing towards the top. Heavy drips fall from their fingers, smoothing out the bumps.

Life sculpture, thinks Trevor. He should have called it that.

The next week’s lesson is on slabwork, building boxes with straight sides.

Autumn’s closing in. The playing fields are empty. Martin takes the pole from Trevor, reaches, twists it, and blinds creep down the windows, magnolia with a hint of cream.

Bob and Carol decide to make a box together. They punch their lumps of clay competitively, roll it out, make walls. When they put it together it doesn’t fit. Bob’s is taller, Carol’s thicker. It wobbles. There’s an argument, a quiet constrained stridency.

Carol squelches her panel up between her fingers, throws it back on the board, starts again.

“I’ll make one for myself this time. At least I’ll know I’ve done mine right.”

Trevor backs away. He’s heard quarrels before, of course, but they worry him. He thinks of War of the Roses, Carolleen and Michael, edgy words escalating into violence, death. He sees Danny deVito standing between them, small, ineffectual, tragedy crashing around his head.

“… two of them, boy and girl.” Alison’s murmuring to Martin again. They’re at adjoining desks, making separate boxes.

“But they’re living with him? How come?”

“After the divorce I sort of fell apart, couldn’t cope. They said I was unstable, that I was too emotional and it wasn’t good for the kids.”

“That must’ve been real rough.”

“Yes. I went through a bad patch. But Mark’s new partner’s got kids too, about the same age as ours, so they were probably better off there at the time.”

“But now you’re better?”

“I still get weepy, but otherwise I’m so stable I’m boring. I can’t bear to think of Sarah growing into her teens not knowing me, not wanting to come and stay even. Every month she seems further away. But I’ve got my solicitor onto it … legal aid …”

Trevor helps Sukie Lee roll out her clay. He cuts along a steel rule with a sharp blade. If he could sculpt lives he’d do it like this, straight edged, no bumps or billows. Clean.

Week Four. Half-way through the Beginners’ Course, and they’re decorating their boxes, but Trevor says they’ll look at mending china too.

Martin’s brought his broken dish, a lattice creamware basket. It was loved by his wife.

“That’s a lovely thing,” Trevor says, turning it gently in his hands, holding it to the light. “It’s English bone china, not porcelain. It’s made of the purest china clay, and then they’ve added bone ash. Without the ashes you don’t get that translucency. Look at the light through it. It’s so fine you can see the faint graining of the clay.”

“Is it fixable?”

“Depends what you mean,” Trevor tells him. “It can’t be fixed good as new of course. See where the spars are broken, how you can’t see any layers? That’s because it’s been fired at white heat; the fine sand’s melted, turned to glass. The body and the glaze have become one.”

“What can I do?”

“We can join it back together, but it’ll never be like it was, Martin. We can glaze over the cracks. If we’re lucky we won’t be able to see them, but you’ll always know they’re there.”

Trevor still watches his videos in the evenings. He’s slowly changing over to DVDs, but he’s got a big collection and it’s expensive. He’s watching Shallow Hal again and wondering.

It’s funny. He’s started seeing a woodenness in a lot of the acting. Good actors aren’t reacting in a really human way. He hadn’t noticed it before.

It’s strange at work, too. The job’s the same as ever, but he’s listening to people talk, hearing lives in scraps of conversation, their wheels turning, churning onwards through the same crap that he’s trudging through. They’re all rolling along in the same wheel-ruts, breaking axles, having identical punctures. He’s on a bike, though, coasting down the single outside track left by the twin wheels of people-carriers.

It’s raining. Heavy drops smack the leaf-mulched tarmac, soak the bottoms of his jeans.

Trevor’s getting a cold. His nose is stuffed up, throat scratchy, head aching. As he makes the third journey up the four flights of iron stairs, whacking his hip-bone on the railing, he wonders if it’s worth it, if he wouldn’t have been better off curled up in bed, sulking over the idiocy of Twins with a whisky mac.

“If you want to join a handle on properly,” he says, “a handle that won’t come away in your hand and spill milk all over the table, you’ve got to score it first.”

He’s made a neat, simple cream jug, depressed a lip on one side. Now he takes a metal pointer and scratches a cross-hatch of gouges where he wants to put the handle.

Sukie draws a noughts-and-crosses grid lightly on the side of her pot.

“No. Not like that.” He sees Alison glance up sharply, and just as quickly look back down at her work. He holds onto his voice, clenches back the irritation. “You’ve got to put some bloody effort into it, Sukie, some depth. It’s no good just waving at it and expecting it to stick there like magic. Press into it, make a proper mark. If you don’t scratch it won’t stick.”

Sukie’s pressing harder now, biting her lip hard, too. He can see the whiteness of it pulling at her chin.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” Trevor doesn’t want to be like that. He knows the stereotypes, the cross little puffed-up turkeycock of a man. It’s like expecting Alison to be jolly because she’s fat, or Sukie to be a shy oriental with secrets, or red-haired Martin to have a bad temper. Trevor’s not naturally cross … he knows exactly what he’s like, small, mild, waddling like Yoda. Sad and totally ridiculous. “I’m not feeling at all well, but I’ve no right to take it out on you lot. Look. Score it like this, then smooth it over gently with plenty of slip, make both surfaces creamy, the handle and the jug, and press them together.”

He turns to put his tools away. It’s nearly the end of the session, and he can sense the ranks closing behind him, Alison’s sympathetic clucking, Martin coming over to Sukie’s desk, turning his back into shield as fixes her handle on properly.

Trevor feels a sneeze building, but it won’t come. He blots his nose with a handful of tissues.

He struggles through work that week. The catarrh in his sinuses fogs his brain, floats him away from reality. It’s like watching a badly retouched old film, actors just acting, no connection to himself.

By Wednesday he’s feeling better, better still when Trish from reception asks if he’d like to join their group for lunch. There’s not often contact between the shop staff and the lab boys in the back room. Trish reminds him of Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, fluff with a hint of steel, and amazing jewelled fingernails.

“My uncle’s been raving about you, Trevor,” she says, selfconsciously bending down to speak to him. “I didn’t realize he was talking about the same bloke at first. Martin, at your pottery class. He says you’re really good, inspiring. He’s got hidden depths, hasn’t he, girls.”

Thursday evening. Trevor struggles with the car door, arms full, fighting the wind. Security lights flash on-off-on behind the rolling branches, flooding yellow light then dark across the grass-patched mud.

“Can I give you a hand?” It’s Alison, getting out of the next car. “I thought I’d get here early. I can’t believe you’ve been setting up on your own every lesson. All those stairs.”

“Thank you. Yes.”

The art-room’s a Christmas-term mess of glitter, scraps of metallic paper, cotton wool. Every surface is floated with the dust of primary-coloured powder paints mixed to a terracotta sludge. The sink is full of patty-tins, each hollow set with a cake shaped solid mass of paint. Alison piles them efficiently out of the way, rolls up her sleeves.

“What are we doing tonight, Trev?”

“Sculpting from nature, I thought. Leaves, flowers, possibly animals. I’ll let Sukie make a rabbit if it’ll make her happier. I was such a shit last week. Felt dreadful.”

“Nature. Good. I’ve brought something along that I’ve been working on at home, but I need to know what you think. I love trying, but I just don’t know how to do anything properly yet.”

“Leave those tins. The cleaners will deal with them. Show me now, before the others get here.”

Alison unwraps a parcel sheathed in plastic bags, lays it on the desk. She sits, won’t look at it, gazes up into his face. It’s an oblong nameplate, “Sarah” in raised clay serif letters, simply wrought.

Around the word are flowers, petal-perfect, each stem, every thorn in exact detail, writhing from the clay as though they’re planted there. An ant scurries down the step of the “h”, a bee sits in the centre of an “a”. It’s wet grey clay, but it’s a living, organic masterpiece, stunningly original.

“Jesus, Alison. If you can do that, there’s not much more I can teach you. That is totally amazing. You must’ve done this before.”

“No, Trev. I did art in sixth form, but I’ve never done anything since, except helping the children with play-dough when they were tiny. I’ve always wanted to, though, seen shapes in my dreams and itched to make them happen when I wake up.”

“This is for your daughter’s room?”

“Yes. If she ever comes home, she’ll see I’ve kept a place for her.”

“I couldn’t help overhearing you talking to Martin. If there’s anything I can do … I don’t suppose there is – after all I haven’t known you long … but if a character reference would help, saying that you’re in my class, and you seem perfectly stable, normal to me. … Though, seeing this, I don’t know about ordinary. Something like this takes a pretty special sort of imagination.”

As Alison helps take the last box upstairs, Martin pulls up his ancient Golf, lets Sukie out of the passenger side.

“She was getting here by bus,” he tells them. “Not much fun in this kind of weather.”

Now it’s the last session of the term, and they’ve got a treat for Trevor, a bottle of Bulgarian Cabernet, wrapped in paper with robins on.

Trevor’s got a treat for them too. He’s brought in the potter’s wheel, and plenty of aprons.

Bob and Carol have the first try. They’re not moving on to Intermediate Ceramics with Trevor; they’ve signed up to do decoupage next term, Carol’s choice this time.

Carol throws a lump of clay at the turntable, and starts the wheel turning with her foot. She can’t control the spin, the clay flies sideways, it’s just a giggling mess. Bob’s behind her, doing a Swayze, and they’re humming Unchained Melody. Trevor turns away.

Sukie’s next. Trevor centres the clay himself, starts the wheel slowly, shadows her hands, standing just that careful inch away from touching her, encouraging with a smile. The pot’s a poor effort, but she’s pleased with producing something, anything at all. She’s coming back next term.

Alison says she’d rather not try. She’ll make another coil pot instead.

Martin has used a wheel before, finds it easy. His pot isn’t professional, but it isn’t bad.

They had thought of meeting up for a drink afterwards, but the roads are icy, it’s dark, and they’d best be getting home. Martin and Sukie wish the others a happy Christmas, say they’re looking forward to starting again in January. Carol and Bob go too.

“I’ll help you pack up,” Alison says. “You can’t get all this downstairs on your own.”

“Wait, Alison. The wheel’s still set up. Won’t you have a go? Why not?”

“I don’t know. Something about it scares me. I think it’s the feeling of something else being in charge, of being out of control.”

“I won’t let you be. Try it. Take a chance, see where it takes you.”

He balls a lump of clay, dead centres it hard, weight to the bottom, firm and stable. Alison sits down and sets the wheel spinning, slowly at first, as her fingers get used to the sensation of the clay moving through them, then faster as she realizes that it’s her hands and feet, not the wheel, in control. She presses, eases off, squeezes inwards, curves outwards with her thumbs, and sees the shape respond to her lightest touch, ridging and bending.

Trevor doesn’t hear schmaltzy music playing. He doesn’t move around and stand close, closer still behind her. He remembers seeing a jack russell trying to hump a Labrador once, how ridiculous it looked.

He doesn’t guide her fingers. They seem to be doing well enough on their own. Her eyes are alight, alive with the pleasure of new sensation, experience, delight.

He smiles at her, eyes level. She smiles, sharing, unselfconscious, holding nothing back. And the faint, smeared muddiness of her face is there, and it is real and it doesn’t matter at all.