The French story - 6
I may pause posting these at this point; it starts to get saucy soon!
Six
Whether it was excitement, anticipation or apprehension I couldn’t have said, but I was unable to sleep much that night. Having left Sylvie’s, I tidied up my side of the barn and locked up for the day. In many respects, the key I had been given was merely a placebo. When I returned in the morning — and for the many mornings after that — there was always the tell-tale sign that someone had been in to check that the kitchen didn’t need replenishing or the toilet cleaning. Although on the face of it unlikely, I assumed it must have been Hergé simply because I hadn’t seen any other domestic staff apart from long-shots of the gardener. If I had been initially a little shocked at the intrusion, that soon passed, and it became a comfort to know that someone was keeping me stocked with coffee, and was also taking away any rubbish I had left lying around. At one point (perhaps after a week or two, I can’t be sure) I deliberately left ‘rubbish’ in different places throughout the barn, a bit like setting a trap for a mouse. Anything left in the lounge, kitchen or toilet areas was retrieved and disposed of; beyond that, nothing was touched. It was as if there were an invisible line, a force-field across which Hergé or an invisible acolyte could not travel. It was reassuring. And considering what I was planning to work on, how could anyone be confident as to what was ‘rubbish’ and what not? Occasionally there was evidence of things having been moved — or at least I imagined so. Was that tube of glue really where I had left it the previous evening? And hadn’t I leant that plastic sheeting leaning against the wall at a slightly greater angle? Or was all that suspicion an indication of some kind of growing low-level paranoia.
On the topic of minor tampering, my initial focus had been on the materials for my sculpture. As an adjunct to the largest working area, I had dedicated a section of the barn next to the sofas as a painting space in readiness to meet my patroness’s challenge, with room to leave canvases to dry against the wall not far from the small hob. Why was I less concerned about these — especially as it was evident from very early on that the they were being moved and looked at. Any potential anger on discovering this was dissipated as soon as I found one of the canvases had been moved after a visit from Sylvie. And why wouldn’t she want to move them to have a better look? Isn’t that what I would have done?
For some reason at that point I hadn’t considered Hélène or anyone else might also do so.
It was nearly lunchtime that next day — the day after my first meeting with Hélène — when there was a knock at the door. I anticipated it might be Sylvie wanting to book-end our earlier conversation, but it was Hélène. She was wearing a plain pale ochre t-shirt and a kind of russet-coloured skirt. In her hand she was holding a small electronic device which, on seeing me, she brandished vaguely in my direction.
“Time to get you to work,” she said with a business-like smile.
“So soon?” I asked playfully.
She made her way to the painting space having collected one of the upright chairs on the way. Surveying the interior briefly, she put the chair down so that a section of plain wall would be behind her, and then she sat. I started to gather some things together, pulling out an easel and setting it down about seven feet from her. A pile of virgin canvases of various shapes and sizes were propped against the wall.
“Choose wisely,” she said as she watched me.
“How so?”
“Today I’m giving you just fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes! It normally takes me at least that long just to lay down a ground.”
I expected some discussion and debate, assumed that I would have some say in the matter.
“My point exactly,” Hélène said. “Remember what I said about freeing the artist in you? Fifteen minutes. No time to lay a ground, to do rough sketches. It has to be paint straight on to canvas; limited mixing.”
“What do you expect at the end of it?” I asked, a little hurt, concerned that for all her protestations she didn’t really understand art — or artists — at all.
“Nothing you will be very proud of. Nothing finished. Probably nothing that looks remotely like me.”
“Then what’s the point?”
She laughed.
“That’s exactly the point! Oh, I will give you a little more time on other days, but for now I want to find a way to for you to become more spontaneous, to break into your reliance on having so much time. That’s the point, Paul. So in a moment, when I press my little button, the time starts. Fifteen minutes. No more talking. You just let me know when you’re ready.”
So, my experiment was to begin. Suddenly this felt serious; as if I really was actually going to be engaged, become a player in Hélène’s little drama. The preliminaries with Hergé now felt inconsequential, an amuse bouche; even the inaugural filming with Sylvie not much more than that. Now it was up to me. As I flicked through the blank canvases, I had a sense of Hélène’s approach — or at least a part of it. She had created an environment, provided the tools — including herself as model — and now it was time to see how the guinea pig responded. It was an image that popped into my mind all of a sudden, unbidden: me stepping into the wheel of a hamster’s cage and being expected to run and run and run.
Until when? Until I’d had enough, until I’d chosen to stop? Until the wheel broke and could turn no more? Or until the wheel and the cage outlasted me and I collapsed, exhausted? Perhaps it might be worse than that.
I chose a small canvas, 7” x 9”, squeezed out a modest amount of acrylic paint from a limited palette, then selected two round-point brushes — one thick, one thinner. From a range of empty jars, I selected one and filled it with water from the sink, then set it down near the easel. Looking to check I had all necessary equipment to hand, I felt suddenly nervous, like a sprinter worried he had left his shoe laces untied. And I had been conscious of Hélène’s eyes on me all the time, watching every movement as if she were ticking things off an invisible checklist. I remembered my first driving test and sitting in the driver’s seat, the instructor impassive alongside me waiting for the words “start the engine”.
“Are you ready?”
Hélène’s voice bore no resemblance to that of the florid man who had failed me three times before grudgingly giving way, I suspect more out of respect for my dogged persistence than any great improvement in my driving. I wondered if she would fail me first time — and then, convinced she would, how many more times might she do so after that? Surely that was my only possible fate unless I was able to pull something magical out of the hat. It was a notion that just piled on the pressure.
I nodded. I could think of nothing else to do.
“Go,” she said and her finger twitched, her face turning to freeze at an angle of about thirty degrees to me, perfect for a portrait. Now all I had to do was execute.
Of course I failed. The fifteen minutes whistled by incredibly quickly, so much so that I had to get Hélène to confirm she hadn’t made a mistake when she told me to stop. We had both heard the little device beeping; there could be no error.
She rose, walked to my side, then placed a conciliatory hand on my shoulder as we examined the canvas. It looked to me as if it had been attacked by a madman let loose with a stick and some paints and told to draw something with his eyes closed and holding the brushes in his teeth. The outlines were too vague to be meaningful, though a few marks seemed to hint at the subject with one in particular, where the neck and shoulder merged, feeling particularly fine. It was a line I would not have changed for the world. I had swept the paint on with little regard for accuracy, as if the measure of success was to get as much colour on the canvas in the given time — like a contestant in a bizarre gameshow. A losing contestant, it appeared.
Hélène said nothing, removing her hand, taking a step back as if in deeper examination of my amateur efforts.
“Well?” I asked, expecting — or needing — feedback.
She shook her head.
“Not now; not yet. On the reverse of the canvas, on the frame, write the number ‘1’ and today’s date. Do that on each painting you produce. Do not touch it in any way; I will know. When it’s dry I’m going to take it away — I’ll take them all away — and then, when the time is right, I plan to have a little exhibition, just for you and me and Sylvie. That will be where we will judge the extent of our success.”
I walked forwards and removed the painting from the easel then placed it against the wall. It looked solitary and forlorn; far too small, far too alone, far too incomplete.
As I started to clear up, Hélène squeezed my arm as if consoling someone who had just had terrible news or suffered agonisingly bad luck. She said nothing further.
*
“Did you think it was worthwhile?”
I was subject once again to video-scrutiny in Sylvie’s studio. There had been no need for her to place a warning finger to her lips when I had entered, nor to lead me to the appropriate silo. I had mimicked a gesture for coffee however.
Just as I had the previous day, I told her what had happened with Hélène.
“Worthwhile? I don’t think so.” I hesitated. “I don’t know. There was one brushstroke that I was especially pleased with. Does that count as success?”
“One?” She laughed. “Just one?”
“I know,” I smiled. “I felt so much like an amateur it was astonishing. How could I possibly produce anything worthwhile in just fifteen minutes?”
“You produced a line,” she suggested. It was part-playful and part something else.
“And not the kind of mark I’d usually make either.” I wanted my statement to sound like a rejection, but it was the alternative interpretation Sylvie picked up on.
“And maybe that’s the point.” I saw her glance towards the camera. “Perhaps that’s what Hélène means when she says she’s trying to free that other artist in you.”
It was an argument I had tried on myself during the brief interval between Hélène leaving my studio and me arriving at Sylvie’s. I knew it was a valid, and it angered me because of that. I wasn’t upset because Hélène might eventually be proved right, but rather because I hadn’t thought of it myself. All artists are arrogant, we have to be; full of self-belief and selfish with it, thinking we are able to interpret ourselves as much as our subjects, always in control over what we are trying to do — or think we are trying to do. Or out of control and deliberately so. We justify everything we do or do not do on the basis of self; we can hold up the mirror of who we are, think we are — or want to be — and argue for anything. But here was an example which challenged much of that: I was being told what to do, where the issues where, what I should try. It felt a little like going back to school. I glanced at the camera, then back to Sylvie.
“The artist I’m trying to free is the one who can take hard physical objects and rearrange them into different patterns, juxtapose them in new ways, force them into conflict with each other in order to pose new questions about what they are, their worth, their place in the world. That’s why I came here. That’s the me I’m trying to find.”
Sylvie let the dust settle on that manifesto for a moment.
“And who’s to say that you won’t find that person, Paul? How do we know that Hélène’s exercises won’t trigger something which frees that part of your creativity too? Maybe it’s not really about the painting at all.”
She could have been right of course, and I half-grunted a kind of assent; but that didn’t change my objection to not being in charge, master of my own destiny.
“Do you feel you’re making progress, by the way?” I asked. “I mean, you’ve been in here longer than I have. Is Hélène trying to bring out something else in you, unearth some talent other than that you’re trying to hone?”
“In my case I’ll settle for being good at just one thing.” She laughed. It wasn’t meant as a dig at me, so I didn’t take it that way. “In my case it’s a bit more like peeling back an onion, I think. If I had to settle on a metaphor, I’d chose than one.”
“Because?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. It came out casually, as if it were not only self-evident, but trifling in importance. “Because I haven’t got to the heart of me yet. I don’t think it’s about reworking or rediscovering in my case. Not at all. I’m still on my first journey.”
“And you think I’m not?” The notion of me as some kind of proven, mature artist was amusing.
“Let’s just say you’ve had a bit of a longer run-up, shall we?”
She meant it to be funny, and it was funny. We laughed because of it, and part of me felt as if a pressure value had been released just a little bit. Was that one of the things Sylvie and I could do for each other, be a foil or a counterweight? Did we offer each other a mirror, a reflection in which we could examine ourselves? And was that all part of Hélène’s meticulous plan, one of the reasons why she had chosen two artists from non-competing fields? If so, it was an idea with some merit; I had to give her credit for that.
“How’s the sculpture going by the way,?”
Having walked through the door with the sole focus being to discuss my painting experience with Hélène, I hadn’t expected that from her. There it was, you see, that self-centredness. I found the question amazing not because she had asked it, nor because I was unwilling to discuss it, but because I hadn’t foreseen it.
“Early days,” I offered. “Take a look next time you come round — though there’s not much to see yet.”
“I’ll come by a little later.”
And I knew she would. I also knew that the thing she would be most interested in seeing was my first painting.