A book of silences

Chapter four - the prowler

Bev spun around, looking at each painting briefly, before moving in to examine one of the pictures from close up. "Each of these paintings, they're so different, so real! And your technique, it's fantastic! Almost like one of the Italian Masters ..."

Cat and Bee tuned out as soon as Bev said the word 'technique'. Both knew from bitter experience that B2 could drone on and on for hours about Renaissance brush techniques even if you didn't respond to her, and this guy was answering her, even seemed to know (and care!) about what she was saying. Bee looked at Cat and touched opposite fingertips together, turning them and making little kissing sounds before raising an eyebrow. Cat rolled her eyes back at her, and they decided to explore the man's studio whilst he was talking.

"Ignoring all the arse kissing B2's doing, this guy really is amazing!" whispered Cat to Bee. Even though looking at another's sketch books without permission was considered very rude, art-school wise, she was leafing through one of the journals she'd found on his desk. It was a sketch book full of drawings of feathers, each image the same size, one to a page, each centred exactly. Some sketches were just a few suggestive lines, others just smears of colour whilst others were incredibly intricate pen-and-ink workups.

Bee stuck her head over Cat's shoulder and turned back a few pages. "It's weird, it's almost like he's looking for something essential in the object, a common thread."

"Yeah, like he's paring back the image, taking bits out, looking for its, its ..."

"Feather-ness," said a voice in Cat's left ear. She looked up. Whilst they'd been examining his sketch book the man had crept up on them, Bev in tow. Cat hastily returned the sketch book to its resting place and gave a guilty grin.

He gestured with his hand, dismissing Cat's gaffe and picked the book up. "I'd forgotten I'd left this out, I used to be obsessed with, well, the, thingness of things, I used to call it." He turned a few pages and examined his drawings, grinning. "I did these years ago, used to collect feathers from pillows, from the street, from friends' budgies, drove my parents mad. My studio partner had dreadful allergies, she divided our space strictly in two with a big red line, UN border stuff if I stepped over the boundary. Shit, the weird stuff I used to collect." He grinned in recollection.

 Bee and Bev exchanged a glance, then Bee gestured at Cat. "Like seven hundred and forty-two Queen Anne scallop shells, individually photographed and mounted in grey cardboard boxes?"

"Or small rounded grey pebbles less than seven centimetres in diameter, no quartz inclusions and no concrete," said Bev, seemingly quoting from memory.

"Or single, lost, children's gloves, aged five or under?" added Bee.

"When Cat first asked me, I thought she meant gloves belonging to individual lost five-year-old children. Not many of them in Hobart, I thought!" said Bev, sotto voce.

"Or cigarette butts found in the street without lipstick that hadn't been stubbed out," said Bee, not listening to Bev.

"Or seagull primary feathers found on Long Beach," said Bev.

"Left-handed," corrected Bee, "you forgot, left-handed feathers only!" Bev nodded in agreement.

("Winged," muttered Cat crossly under her breath, "Left winged!").

"Or used white cake bags from Banjo's, paper, under forty centimeters in size,"

"With jam stains!' added Bee, with a snort, then corrected herself, "No, we decided that the stain could be anything edible, confectionery-wise, remember?"

The man laughed with delight and looked at Cat with interest. "I thought I was the only one who had this level of obsessiveness."

B1 and B2 exchanged amused glances. "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

                                                                                              .....

The long and short of it was that the New-Blood/Prowler was, in fact, a visiting artist from the UK, though he was based in Sydney now. He was in the Art-School for a couple of months, down to do a lecture series, take part in student crits ("only if I'm interested, mind!"), make some work and do as yet unformulated stuff. He'd applied for a residency on the strength of the portraits in the studio and had been snapped up at once. ("Not surprising," whispered Bev, awed "those are world class!").

His name, Geoffrey Sykes, was unknown to any of them, unusual in the publicity-obsessed world of painting. "Never really exhibited much, didn't really fit in at the Art School," was his explanation. "Trained at Goldsmiths, post grad at the Slade, did a few little shows but got a bit sick of all the hype and back-stabbing. Paint where I want and what I want, do a few residencies when I can get off my arse, that sort of thing. Of course, it helps that pater is as wealthy as Croesus."

"Who?' hissed Bev.

"Rich Dead Greek Guy," Bee whispered back hurriedly.

Sykes, as he liked to be known, had that arrogant confidence possessed only by the physically perfect or obscenely rich. Medium height, dark haired, not overly good looking or muscled, he nevertheless drew the eye and attention of everyone in the room. He was dressed in paint spattered jeans, a plain white t-shirt and battered steel toed boots with over-long, bright red laces triple knotted to take up the slack. Strong hands, sparsely dotted with paint, with a thin line of black italic text up his arms and under the sleeves of his top. Despite paint and dirt, all of his clothes were very good quality ('Louis Vuitton tee' noted Bee), and his artfully untidy haircut would have set him back a hundred dollars or more.

"So, you must be a painter," said Sykes, gesturing at Bev's paint covered overalls. All three girls grinned. Bev was the epitome of a painter, and they all knew it. He looked at Bee and raised his eyebrows.

"Print and bloody gorgeous ephemeral sculpture," inserted Bev, to Bee's obvious pleasure.

"And great coffee!" added Cat.

Sykes turned to Cat. There was a pause.

"She's a fabulous drawer!" said Bev.

"And she makes things. Many things. Scary things. Weird things. Wonderful things."

"And she collects, er, anything."

"And she's very small!"

"But fierce!" added Bee seeing Cat's eyebrows descend.

Another pause, whilst Sykes put on his lecturer head. "But what do you do?" he asked, with an emphasis on do. He corrected himself. "No, what do you think you do?"

 They all looked at Cat for a long moment. This was a question she'd been considering since before she'd arrived at the art school. She liked to paint. She liked to sculpt. She liked to collect things, but what she actually liked to do was a combination of all of them, plus a bit of music and classification and asking what others thought before ignoring them. She put her head on one side, trying to find a word for what she did. She drew a breath. "I look at things. I look at things really hard and try to find meaning."

When she said no more, Sykes nodded approvingly. "Good luck with that," he said, before turning back to where Bee and Bev were moving in on the packet of hob-nobs lying opened on his desk.