Past Secrets. Cathy Kelly

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       CHAPTER SEVEN

      Mrs Devlin’s art classes were different from any other lesson in the school, agreed all the girls in the sixth year. For a start, Mrs Devlin herself was not exactly your average teacher, although she was older than many of the others. Even her clothes bypassed normal teacher gear, whether she wore one of her long honey suede skirts and boots with a low-slung belt around her hips, or dressed down in Gap jeans and a man’s shirt tied in a knot around the waist. Compared to Mrs Hipson, headmistress and lover of greige twinsets and pearlised lipstick, Mrs Devlin was at the cutting edge of bohemian chic.

      Most of all, the girls agreed, it was her attitude that made her different. The other teachers seemed united in their plan to improve the students whether they wanted to be improved or not. But Mrs Devlin, without ever exactly saying so, seemed to believe that people improved themselves at their own rate.

      So on May the 1st, with just weeks to go to the state exams and with the whole teaching body in a state of panic, Mrs Devlin’s assignment to her sixth-year class was to ‘forget about the exams for a moment and paint your vision of Maia, the ancient pagan goddess who gave her name to May and who was a goddess of both spring and fertility’.

      ‘As today’s the first of May, it’s the perfect day for it.’

      She stopped short of pointing out that the exam results probably wouldn’t matter in a millennium. Not the way to win friends and influence people in a school. ‘You’ve all been working so hard with your history of art,’ Christie added as she perched on the corner of the desk at the top of the class. She rarely sat down at the desk during art practicals, preferring to walk around and talk to her students: a murmured bit of praise here, a smile there. ‘I thought it might be nice to spend one hour of the day enjoying yourselves, reminding yourselves that art is about creativity and forgetting about studying.’

      The class, who’d come from double English where they were re-butchering The Catcher in the Rye for exam revision, nodded wearily.

      The most art they got to do these days involved colouring in their exam revision timetables with highlighter pens – generally a lot more fun than the revision itself.

      ‘Maia is the oldest and most beautiful of the seven stars called the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades,’ Christie continued. ‘The Pleiades are part of the constellation of Taurus, which is ruled over by Venus, for those of you interested in astrology. Maia is around five times larger than our sun.’

      It was such a sunny morning that flecks of dust could be seen floating on shafts of light filtering in from the second-floor windows. St Ursula’s was an old building, with decrepit sash windows and huge sills perfect for sitting on between classes and blowing forbidden cigarette smoke out into the netball court below.

      ‘In art, spring is represented, as you know, by the sense of sensuality and passion,’ Christie went on. ‘Can anyone remember any artists who painted spring in such a way?’

      ‘Botticelli,’ said Amber Reid.

      Christie nodded and wondered again what Amber had been getting up to on Wednesday. The way she’d been dressed and the joy in her step made Christie damn sure that Amber had been on her way to some illicit activity.

      ‘Yes, Amber, Botticelli is a good example. Remember, girls, artists didn’t have television to give them ideas, or films. They looked at their world for inspiration and got it from nature. Keep that in mind during the exam, they were influenced by their times. By war, poverty, nature, religion. As we discussed in art history last week, religion is important as an influence on artists. Remember the puritanical Dutch schools with their hidden messages.

      ‘Today’s the pagan festival of Beltane, which is why May is called Bealtaine in Irish, and it’s a celebration of spring, warmer days, blossoming nature and blossoming of people too. Of course, the Church wasn’t too keen on pagan festivals, but they’re part of our history too, so it’s interesting to know about them. You paint, I’m here if you need me.’

      The class were silent as they considered painting a fertility goddess. At St Ursula’s in general, sexuality was given a wide berth by the teaching staff. Even in sex education classes, the concept of passion was diluted, with scientific words like ‘zygote’ giving students the impression that it was a miracle the human race had gone on for so long considering how boring procreation sounded.

      ‘Is it true that Titian only painted women he’d gone to bed with?’ asked Amber suddenly, her eyes glittering.

      Christie had a sudden flash of knowledge: a picture of Amber and a dark, moodily dangerous young man came into her mind, entwined on a childhood bed doing grown-up things. Christie knew exactly what Amber had been up to the day before. She blazed with burgeoning sexuality. To embody Maia, Amber just needed to paint a self-portrait.

      Christie felt a rush of pity for poor old Faye who probably hadn’t a clue that her teenage daughter had just taken one of the giant steps into womanhood. Having sons was definitely easier than daughters, she thought gladly. Sons were rarely left holding the baby.

      ‘So I believe,’ said Christie carefully. ‘Paint, Amber,’ she whispered, ‘don’t talk.’

      ‘I swear Mrs Devlin’d bring in nude life models if she was let,’ groaned Niamh to Amber. Niamh was struggling with art in general and was sorry she hadn’t done home economics instead. How was she going to embody a fertility goddess? Couldn’t they please do a still life instead – a couple of bananas or a nice simple apple?

      ‘I wish she did bring in nude models,’ said Amber, glaring at Niamh. ‘It’s impossible to learn to draw people properly with their clothes on.’ At least in art college, she’d be able to study line drawing properly with nude models…

      But she wasn’t going, was she? She was going to New York with Karl, before the exams, and she had to tell her mother all this, and soon.

      ‘It’s not as if you haven’t seen a man with no clothes on, Niamh,’ added the girl on the other side of Amber with a wicked grin. ‘You’ve been going out with Jonnie for a year now, don’t tell me he’s kept his boxers on all this time.’

      It was Niamh’s turn to grin. ‘He’s worth drawing, all right. And he’s got a bigger you-know-what than all those Michelangelo СКАЧАТЬ