Sykes' arrival was a call to arms for various groups, sects, movements and revolutionary splinter cells in the Art School. His energy, his disdain for bureaucracy, his drawling sarcasm, his unwillingness to take part in anything that did not interest him, only served to highlight how staid, boring and conventional the Art School was. It was obvious that he was a talented painter, incredibly talented, but it was the way he presented his work that inflamed passions throughout the faculty. At his first lecture he dismissed the bulk of the conceptualists approach to art, epitomized by The Young Wankers, as pretentious crap. The Traditionalists, with their emphasis on technique and the Old Masters, he called 'a bunch of anal-retentive old farts. The Realists movement was derided as 'bad photography'. Installation Art was described as 'filling a big white room with crap and charging an arm and a leg for it'. He went on in this vein for another twenty minutes, insulting just about every art movement he could think of.
"You can see why he didn't fit in at Goldsmiths," whispered Bev, watching with glee as The Young Wankers tried to heckle Sykes from their position at the back of the lecture theatre.
"Creativity comes from the conflict of ideas," said Bee, a little pompously. She waited a moment, and, when no-one commented, said "Donatello Versace."
Bev nodded to show she was listening, then pointed at the Young Wankers, who were desperately trying to attract Sykes' attention. "Serves 'em right for trying to be cool and hip, sitting at the back of the room, can't make themselves heard. Too trendy to shout, too intellectual to throw anything. Now the Weird Painters, they've got the right idea." She pointed to a group of six or seven students sat at the front of the lecture hall.
A mixed group, these were the quiet, painting-obsessed students who spent hours locked in their studios, painting, to the exclusion of all else. Normally they did not come to any lectures, except ones by painters/for painters/about painters, when they would sit on the front row, taking copious notes and not speaking. Now they were talking loudly, waving their hands, red-faced and disagreeing with Sykes.
"Shit, that's Anna shouting down there!" said Cat, pointing to a short, bespectacled girl shaking her finger at Sykes. Anna was thought, along with Bev, to be one of the best painters the school had had for years. She did not speak much, suffering from a combination of a monomaniacal obsession with the work of Titian and crippling social shyness.
"She's certainly come out of herself!" said Bev with a grin. The small girl was leaning over the lecture hall bench, plaits waving with passion as she upbraided the lecturer.
"Lucky the lecture hall pews are fixed," said Bee, "Otherwise she'd be at his throat like a little terrier." Anna was now trying to climb over the benches to get at Sykes. She had her pencil case in her hand, and it looked like she was going to throw it. One of the other Weird Painters wrestled it out of her hands and forced her back into her seat.
Through it all, Sykes grinned and nodded, seeming to consider the irate students not-so-polite comments. Once Anna was disarmed and forced back into her seat, he placed his lecture notes in a shoulder bag and, with a cheery wave at the girls where they sat in the seventh row, left the lecture hall. He clasped his hands above his head like a prize-fighter as he left the hall. Insults and heckling followed his exit.
"Now that," said Cat, looking around at the buzzing hall, filled with students and lecturers arguing and shouting, "That is what I call a lecture!"
.....
After the lecture, the canteen was absolutely heaving. The kitchen staff were pissed off, glaring at the mass of undergraduates who had poured out of the lecture hall and were steadfastly not ordering food or coffee, just clogging up the cafeteria and shouting at each other. Cat watched with delight as one of the grumpier of the catering staff pushed a half empty trolley of dirty dishes straight through the crowd, people being thrust aside like pack ice before an icebreaker in the Spring, steadfastly ignoring a storm of complaints behind her.
Students stood around in groups, waving hands and talking passionately about art, Sykes and life in general. Diverse groups met and expressed their disgust at the lecturer, the Art School and almost everything else; for the first time ever, the student body was united, and the Addams girls were particularly enjoying watching the uber cool Young Wankers interacting with the Weird Painters. Svelte Kimi and super serious Anna seemed to be getting on like a house on fire, with assorted hangers-on and associates standing behind them and nodding their heads in unison.
Over in the corner, a small group of post-grads were doing the same as the undergraduates, (but obviously in a more stylish, intellectual manner). They had the head of sculpture hemmed in and their body language seemed to suggest that some of them were considering physical violence.
"This is brilliant!" said Bev, watching the icebreaker/catering lady finally run aground on a shoal of grubby ceramic students. Being more practically based (and, overall, much stronger) than many of the other art students, they were more resistant to being shoved aside, and they responded to the assault with shouts and complaints. These were initially ignored, but eventually the waitress responded, bellowing at them to move and trying to drive the trolley further into the mass of potters. They pushed back, and dirty cups and plates fell with a clatter and a cheer from the rest of the student body, causing the catering supervisor to get involved. More shouts, and the kitchen staff seemed to realize that if no-one ordered food, they wouldn't have to do any work, so they retired en-masse to the edges of the room. There they stood in small groups, gossiping and sneering at their customers.
"Wankers!" shouted Bev, for no other reason than to inflame things further. Bee shushed her angrily.
"You'll start a riot!" her tall friend said fiercely.
Bev, who had been hoping for something along those lines, tried to look innocent, but couldn't restrain a grin. "That would be brilliant! We'd be able to miss all our lectures and classes for the day!"
"But you love Wednesday afternoons lectures!"
"Well yes," said Bev. "But this could mean time off college. We could go out and do cool stuff!"
"You'd only go and paint, you always do. And if there really is a riot, they might close your studio."
This was serious. On one hand chaos and shouting and high drama, on the other the chance to finish one of her pieces, or at least get some painting done.
No contest. "Wankers!" she shouted loudly, "Stop causing trouble and get back to work!"
At this point the alarm on Cat's phone went off. She dragged it out and looked at it before scowling. "Damn," she said. "It's my landlady, I forgot I've got to sign for her Coles delivery."
"Can't she sign for her own groceries?" asked Bee. Cat's accommodation, like all her living arrangements, were yet another source of great interest and some annoyance to her friends; they knew she lived with an elderly mad cat lady somewhere in West Hobart, but beyond that they knew nothing, other than that Cat felt she had a number of obligations to her. As she seemed to be a bit of a recluse, these included signing for groceries, meeting various utility workers and generally liaising with anyone who wanted to see the house owner. This made Cat's digs unbelievably fascinating to her friends. In fact, Bev and Bee had more than once tried to follow Cat home in an attempt to find out exactly where she lived, but they were such incompetent investigators that they'd lost her both times, once being distracted by a cafe they'd never seen before, and the second time losing Cat's diminutive form when they'd argued about whether they should be called private eyes or private dicks.
Despite telling Bev off, Bee was quite excited about the fiery aftermath of Sykes' lecture, and was looking forward to discussing/arguing about it with her friends, with all the drama and emotion that would entail; perhaps if she was a bit late this time? She looked at Cat hopefully, but her friend just shook her head. It was hard for Cat to understand her relationship with Mrs Saunders, let alone explain it to her friends, so, despite protests, she gathered her stuff together and headed out of the school.
.....
Where to start with Mrs Saunders? Cat thought. She was waiting impatiently outside the primary school on Goulburn Street for the delivery of groceries, a battered four wheeled pull-along child's trolley at her side, as usual wondering why exactly she was doing this for her landlady. Mrs Saunders was one of the first people she'd met in Hobart, answering a 'flat for rent' advert she'd found in a discarded paper on the street. She'd been living rough for a few days, sleeping in the doorways of the larger stores in the CBD, surrounded by her bags. Even though she'd been in the city for less than a week, she'd started collecting things instantly, which, along with her obsession for order, made moving around town a near-military procedure, involving checking contents, repacking bags, balancing loads and settling straps on her shoulders. She already had a load of stuff, mainly journals and works-in-progress, in a self-storage container in Glenorchy while she looked for a flat. She was loath to transfer any of her new stuff there as it would most likely involve going through all of the old items before she could pack away the new ones. Anyway, Cat had just decided that she really needed somewhere to live and dump all her stuff immediately, when a page from a week-old local paper had blown down the street and got caught on her pile of belongings. When she examined it, she found an advert. 'Room available' it said, 'suit quiet girl. Lots of storage. Cheap.' This ticked all the boxes for a flat for Cat and looking up the address in her street guide, she found Goulburn Street was nearby. With a smile, she hoisted her various bags onto her shoulders, and set off. Serendipity or what?
Twenty minutes later she was standing on a sloping suburban street, sweating profusely, and swearing. The address on the advert was a large two-storey brick building, completely surrounded by a massively neglected garden. This garden was so overgrown that it filled all the free space, blocking the path with branches and bushes; obviously no-one had lived here for years. There were spiky blackberry shoots and suckers infiltrating every tree and shrub, dangling menacingly from every branch. These promised cuts and scratches to anyone who tried to enter.
The house itself was built of old brick, with off-white paint peeling from all the window- and door-frames. It must have had a half basement, as the windows were too high on the walls, making it impossible for anyone to go up to the house and peer in. This gave the house a snooty sort of a look, as though it were looking down on its viewers. Not exactly friendly, thought Cat. She looked further - no rubbish bags and a shed covered in greyed wooden shingles, whose door looked so warped that it would never open again. A pair of ripped, dirty yellow curtains, a smashed light bulb in the porch light and a line of glass jars in what she guessed was the kitchen, so coated in dust they looked opaque.
Cat dumped her bags on the street and swore again. The address was obviously wrong, no-one lived in the derelict house. It was a corner house, so she walked back along the street, but felt certain the advert couldn't be about the two houses closest; one was too pretty and obviously owned by a young family, whilst the other screamed rich retirees; neither seemed likely to be offering the large, cheap and probably mythical space she needed. Cursing her luck and the newspaper, she started back to her mound of luggage.
As she reached her bags, Cat glanced at the kitchen window, just visible behind the overgrown garden, and noticed one of the curtains twitch. She continued to look and saw the window hanging pulled back a few inches at one corner, revealing a pale face looking out at her. Digging into her pockets, Cat pulled out the advert and held it up. She pointed at the piece of paper, then herself, then at the house and made an enquiring expression. The face seemed to consider her for a moment then nodded slightly, before crooking a finger at her.
Cat gathered her bags and pushed the rotting wooden gate open. One of the hinges was broken, so this entailed physically lifting the gate, shuffling into the garden whilst heavily loaded down with bags and trying to avoid tendrils of blackberries, then putting it down. As Cat was such a tidiness freak, she then had to do it all again, firstly removing entangled thorn branches, then turning and inching the gate back to its closed position. When she looked up at the house again the face was still watching her, nodding in approval.
Getting up the path was easier than she thought it would be; what she had thought to be impenetrable thickets turned out to be outcrops of greenery that concealed a narrow brick path that wound its way to the house. This turned and twisted between islands of shrubbery that had seemed to be a continuous wall from outside, making pleasant curves and bends. Looking closer at the path, it seemed clear it was used, but some chance arrangement of bushes made it appear impassable.
When she reached the house, the door was open, and Cat cautiously entered, still heavily laden. She stood in the entrance and took in a few deep breaths that contained none of the normal smells of deserted houses; no mould or damp or stale air. Once her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, she noticed an elderly lady standing just behind the door.
"Crap!" said Cat, taking a step back, "I never saw you there!"
The old lady smiled. "Most people don't."
She was tall and skinny and a little bent over, with startlingly white hair that had escaped her hair pins in places, framing a thin face and making her look disheveled. With a smile, she held out a long slim hand, lightly marred by age spots and arthritic knuckles. "You saw the advert?"
Cat placed the newspaper cutting into her hand. "Yes, I'm Cat. Catherine. I'd love to see the room you advertised."
The woman read the advert carefully. She raised her eyebrows and looked at her carefully. "Hello, I'm Helen Saunders. But, you see, I'm afraid there isn't a room available ..."
Cat felt a shock of disappointment at the words and closed her eyes tightly to hide the tears welling up in them.
"... There's only a basement flat."
.....
So, Cat gained possession of a basement flat. The basement flat. The undergraduate basement flat that Art Students' dreams are made of. It was cold and damp with no kitchen and only one tap, positioned over a massive porcelain sink. There was no heating, and she had to use the outside toilet, a tiny wooden dunny, inhabited by spiders and concealed amongst the thorn bushes at the back of the house. But it was huge, with high ceilings and a back room with lots of light by virtue of an unusual sloping glassed wall cum roof at the rear. The rest of the place she lit with hugely powerful light globes that she wired in, in clumps of three or four for each light fitting. As all her electrical knowledge came from books and helping her dad years ago, she worried that she would blow Mrs Saunders' fuse box, but she hadn't yet.
Once the place was lit, she filled it with all of her belongings, art works and collections. She stole wooden pallets to make a bed and covered them with old blankets from various op-shops and thrift stores. She bought a little camping stove from a second-hand shop, and, after she'd got her job in the supermarket, bought loads of dented tins, filling one entire wall with them, trying to arrange their colours a bit like the Brett Whitely piece, 'Snake'. She made shelves out of bricks and planks stolen from a nearby building site for her clothes, classifying them according to colour and trying to create a seamless blend from red, through yellow to blue (she hated purple). Later she amended this according to body parts, going from hats at one end to boots at the other, but still felt a nagging unease about her system.
In short, Cat fell in love with her new flat. She spent weeks getting it just right, moving art works and clothes and tools around incessantly. She sprayed all her walls with a white anti-mould paint, making her flat uninhabitable for two days; all Mrs Saunders said was 'that doesn't smell very nice'. She screwed heavy duty bolts into the roof to hang sculptures from and installed a plastic pond from K and D Warehouse, complete with a tinkling little fountain that helped her relax when she was tired. Initially she'd wanted to keep goldfish but realized that with her irregular work patterns they might not get fed, and she couldn't cope with the guilt of them dying, (though part of her had felt a sinful little thrill about the thought of sombre fish funerals, intricate tiny marble mausoleums and discreet bronze plaques). The only time that her landlady had objected to her schemes was when she'd wanted to clear out the garden; once she'd spotted Cat wandering around with a second-hand brush cutter, she'd quashed that idea firmly.
However, Cat didn't have everything her own way in her new flat. The place was overrun with Rosemary's many cats, and despite her name, Cat didn't really like them. They spent a lot of their time watching their new housemate through the little basement window at the front of the flat or sitting on the sloped glass roof at the back, staring down at her between their paws while she worked. They seemed fascinated by her, and if she left a door open and unwatched for more than ten seconds, at least one of her feline observers would sneak in and fort themselves up amongst her clothing, eyes-only visible, watching, and objecting strongly when she turned them out.
Also, Mrs Saunders was a recluse, and part of Cat's payment for her flat was to deal with anything that required face-to-face dealings with anyone. ('I don't like people,' Helen had explained one day, and when Cat had pointed out she, too, was a person, had replied, ' .'). Face-to-face covered a lot of situations and included some unusual provisos - Cat had to pay for everything in person and in cash, of which Mrs. Saunders seemed to have an inordinate amount; any deliveries had to be picked up some way from the house by Cat and brought back quickly; and no-one else was to know where she lived.
This explained why Cat was standing in the rain, brooding, on a damp pavement outside a primary school at five pm with a battered child's trolley, after eluding her friends' clumsy attempts at tailing her. A horn broke her out of her reverie.
"Cat!" called a friendly voice, from the open window of a small truck.
Cat looked up and waved back, smiling. This was Greg, who delivered groceries for the local supermarket. They knew each other from her job stacking shelves, and he was loud and cheerful, flirting good-naturedly with anyone aged under fifty. He quickly dug a couple of cardboard boxes out of the truck and put them on Cat's trolley. "You know we can drop these off at your house, don't you?"
"It's up a side alley, you wouldn't get the truck up there. Besides, I need the exercise."
Gary looked like he might object but knew Cat from the supermarket: stubborn was her middle name. He gave a good-natured nod, then waved and got into the truck, before roaring off up the street.
After Gary had left, Cat put her head down and stoically began pulling her trolley up the hill. It hadn't been raining when she'd set out to collect the groceries, but know the light drizzle was soaking her hair, collecting annoyingly on her eyebrows. As she waited to cross the road, she noticed one of Mrs Saunders' cats peering at her from under a bush in a nearby garden. "Fucking lazy waster," she muttered under her breath, as she heaved her load up the kerb, and the cat began licking its arse in her direction.
Getting into the garden was the most annoying part of the trip. It entailed firstly blocking the wheels of the trolley with a special brick, then lifting the garden gate and heaving it open (it was still broken after two years, and Mrs Saunders wouldn't allow Cat to repair the hinges). Next, she had to pull the battered child's wagon through the gate without disturbing any of the bags and boxes piled on it. Then she had to return the special brick to its place on the wall, drag the gate closed and start heaving the groceries up the path, avoiding trailing blackberry shoots, roots and bushes all the way. All whilst cursing and flipping off assorted cats who appeared to watch her, perhaps to ensure the safety of their cat food (a good quarter of the load), or more likely to laugh quietly at the stupid human. Thankfully, no-one ever seemed to pass the garden when this was happening, preserving her dignity.
Finally, she reached the house and began unloading the supplies. As usual, Mrs Saunders was waiting for her, directing her where to put various boxes and bags, cats milling around her ankles, but carefully avoiding Cat, who might 'accidentally' kick them. Ten minutes later, everything was stowed away, and Rosemary gestured towards her kitchen table, which was piled high with cakes and biscuits and other treats, all arranged on a triple layered silver server. "Tea?" she asked.
This was the only good part of grocery night, for Cat. Her landlady made the most amazing biscuits, but with the number of animals around she worried a little about hygiene. She made a point of always examining them for cat hair and the like, but they were always perfect. And, after all, what was a little spittle between enemies? With a sigh, she plonked herself down on a chair and began working her way through a plate full of macaroons.
"Busy day, dear?" asked Mrs. Saunders. She had arranged herself opposite, with two of her cats sitting behind her on the cooker. All three seemed to be regarding Cat with the same mocking stare, which was a little creepy, but she was enjoying the biscuits too much to care.
"Yeah. Our new lecturer, Sykes, is wild, slagged off every artist you could name, then left. Almost caused a riot."
"Sykes?" said Rosemary, with interest. "Sykes? That's not a name I've heard from you before. What does he do?"
"From his performance today, I'd say he creates chaos wherever he goes. He's stinking rich, so you could also say he does whatever he likes. He's a spectacular painter, got these amazing portraits in his studio, set out in a circle, all looking inwards. Really lifelike, they've got that spark of life that really good pictures have."
"Who are the paintings of?" asked Mrs. Saunders, even more interested.
"No-one I know. There's this old lady, all regal looking and stern and a bit creepy. Bit of a headmistress. And there's a young guy, all denim and leather, but looking like he should be wearing something else. He's a bit tasty."
"This Sykes sounds a troublesome," said Mrs Saunders with a frown. "Perhaps you should avoid him. He sounds a little noticeable."
This, according to her landlady, was the biggest faux-pas possible, being noticed. Cat was worried that Mrs. Saunders kept asking her to bring her friends around: Bee and Bev individually were, erm, striking. Put all three of the Addams girls together and a collective madness seemed to take them over; noticeable was the least of their attributes.
"Don't worry, he's a pussycat. He's already under the spell of Bee and Bev's painting skills. And he seems to have an idea about what I'm doing!"
"As long as you're sure," said Rosemary. "And as long as you don't bring him here!"