Outside her own room, Opal had paused for a moment and stared down the corridor at the door to the master. She pondered whether she would ever sleep with her husband again. Strange how something so routine could suddenly become so unthinkable. It had only been a handful of weeks sincethat dayand yet she already found it hard to remember the feeling of being at peace whilst held in Martin’s arms.
It seemed an alien concept, to find comfort in her husband. With each passing night spent alone, the vain hope that she could reclaim that feeling felt increasingly outlandish.
Now, though, in the cold light of day, she needed to put such thoughts to the back of her mind. The whole point of this was to find a reason for being, a reason that wasn’t ‘being Martin’s wife’. Meeting people who had decided to put something else at the centre of their worlds: their art. She hoped to be restored in some way.
‘I’m sure most of you have heard this from Gareth, but I wanted to outline exactly what this tournament is all about.’ Of the five faces in front of her, only Noah’s smiled back. ‘Over the next six weeks you’ll each be working on three different pieces. I’m being quite vague about what that consists of; itcould be a single photograph …’ She locked eyes with Johan. He exhaled a plume of smoke, and Opal regretted relenting on cigarettes indoors.‘Downstairs only, please, with the windows open.’
‘It could be a single poem, or a single sculpture …’ Opal turned her eyes to Heather.
‘Not to be that bitch …’ Heather took a deep breath, already exhausted by her need to explain herself ‘… but I don’t consider myself a sculptor. It’s a fundamentally restrictive practice to identify myself by only one discipline.’
Opal chuckled nervously and looked to Gareth for support. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses, and Opal suspected that beneath the lenses, his eyes were closed. In any case, he did not come to her rescue.
‘Of course, of course, I wouldn’t dream of …’ Opal willed her mind to replay the past ten seconds accurately ‘… restricting your fundamental identity … to practise.’ Opal stumbled through the sentence unconvincingly. A giggle from Ruby and murmurs from Johan. Opal felt like an underprepared substitute teacher, except she needed to struggle on much longer than a school day.
‘Anyway, as I was saying, obviously for the more performance-based pieces, there are no specific time parameters or … well essentially I want you all to be as creative as you like.’
Adam raised his hand slowly.
‘Yes, Adam, you don’t need to um … just speak up whenever you want.’
‘Much appreciated, Miss … Opal. I was wondering if there are any thematic specifications for the work?’
‘Oh yes, yes, sorry, I was just getting to that.’ Opal tried tocalm her breathing, and her nerves with it. ‘Would you like the short version, or a slightly longer version of this part?’
‘I think we would all find the longer version very interesting.’ Noah’s enthusiasm was buoying; the audible groan from Ruby and Johan was not, but Opal persevered. If she was going to ask these young artists to expose the very deepest parts of themselves, the least she could do was explain why.
‘Very well.’ Opal eased back into her seat at the head of the table. ‘As some of you know, this house used to belong to my mother. She was the only daughter of my grandfather, and my uncle, her older brother, sadly didn’t make it through war, so when Grandad died, my mother inherited. She was only twenty-five at the time. My mother is, shall we say, eccentric, so she decided to take down all the art that my granddad had left and replace it with her own collection.’ Opal relaxed into the story, as she noticed even Heather lean forward ever so slightly in her seat.
‘I was born a couple of years later. My father was already my mother’s second husband. The first didn’t last the honeymoon.’ A peal of laughter from the table. It wasn’t quite the truth, but near enough. Opal hadn’t noticed that she was clenching her teeth, until she felt the thawing. ‘Anyway, she used to take me out, into London, and around all the private galleries. This was the 1950s, remember, but my mother was very particular about what she wanted. No landscapes, no watercolours.’
Opal looked around the expectant faces; even Gareth had deigned to remove his sunglasses. ‘One of my earliest memories, and the happiest with my mother perhaps, was standing … well just, I was still using her hand for support … in frontof some huge painting. And Saffie, that’s my mother’s name, telling me that all great art was about three things: birth, death and sex.’ Nods of approval all round. Opal couldn’t help but ride out her high. ‘My mother was never conventional but even for her, it’s a novel way to teach the birds and the bees.’
To her surprise, Adam, and then Noah and eventually all five of her guests put their hands together. And as the clapping died down, an eager chatter replaced it. They were seemingly buzzing with ideas. Opal beamed. They were all too preoccupied to notice. Gareth gave her a sly wink before pulling his shades back down and helping Hetty clear the plates.
‘So, Opal, when do we start?’ It was Johan, calling above the noise. At his question, everyone hushed.
‘Whenever you like.’
‘Maybe we need to make it a gong occasion. We don’t want anyone getting a head start.’ Even Ruby sounded excited.
Heather looked confused. ‘Like, an actual gong?’
Soon enough, all five were lined up in a line at the foot of the staircase. It was quite a scene, what with Martin’s ‘portrait’ hanging luridly above their heads.Fitting, thought Opal. In a way he was the inspiration behind all of this; why shouldn’t he be their mascot?
Opal swung her arm back. ‘Let the games commence,’ she called. The clang reverberated and the group dispersed.
Chapter 18
The others raced off to their respective ‘studios’: Adam to the cleared-out reception room on the ground floor, Heather and Noah to their respective outhouses, and Johan to the small converted barn that was to serve as his darkroom.
Ruby wandered up the stairs, back to her room, and stared at the desk. Someone had left a stack of expensive-looking cream paper, a typewriter and a selection of pens. Ruby preferred to use biro and a reporter’s pad, so she rummaged around in her backpack and set her own supplies on the tabletop.
She couldn’t remember a time when she had nothing to do but write. Usually it was a rushed affair, scribbled words on a napkin, that she might only transfer to a proper page in the minutes before she was due to read them out.
Birth. She thought about what she was going to write about. As she’d never done it herself, her poem would have to be about her own. It was a little out of her comfort zone to embody someone else, in this case Hortense.
She sat back and tried to recall as best she could the afternoon at her auntie Pearl’s birthday barbecue when the details of her conception had first become known to her. Itwasn’t so long ago really, seven years or so, but it felt like a different time. On the cusp of adulthood, Ruby barely recognised the girl she was then.
