Fen

From that point on, Fen has been obsessed with the sculptor and his work. On her return from Munich, she unceremoniously dumped the virginity-taker and spent eighteen months apparently celibate. In body at least. However, the more she studied Fetherstone’s work, the more she analysed his drawing and physically handled his sculptures, the more worldly she became. She studied the fall of light on mass, the relationship between form and space. She also learnt about the tension that intertwining figures could create. She came to understand how bodies could stretch to accommodate both their own desire and that of another. She discovered how the sensation of orgasm could manifest itself in facial expression, the throw of a neck, the twist of the stomach, the flail of arms, the jut of a breast, the buck of buttocks.

She devoted both her Bachelor and Master degree theses to Fetherstone, resolutely ignoring her tutors’ advice that she stand back from the material and certainly refrain from referring to the sculptor by his Christian name.

She fantasized about being the woman in Abandon. She forsook film stars as masturbatory stimulus in favour of the image of the male in Abandon. She looked forward to the day or night when she too could enjoy a coupling commensurate with that of the bronze figures; when she would be seduced to a state of abandon by the desire for, and of, such a man. Consequently, she spurned the advances of a relatively long queue of students who all fell short of her ideal. Too puny. Or too gym-induced beefy. Too uncouth. Too affected.

In her mid-twenties, two men came close; but the reluctance of the first to commit and then Fen’s reluctance to commit to the second, rang the death knell on both. Now, at twenty-eight, Fen is single. She isn’t spending much time looking for a partner, nor is she losing sleep over the situation. After all, would a man enhance her life that much? It’s rather good as it is, in Chalk Farm, North London, where she rents a terraced house with damp and with two friends, bohemian neighbours and her two sisters nearby. Life’s busy with her new job and her bi-monthly lectures at the Courtauld and Tate galleries, which she gives voluntarily. No time for romance and all its panoply. Yes, she recently bought a pine double bed from Camden Lock market, with a king-size duvet for added luxury. However, the wink wink nudge nudging from her housemates met with her rebuttal.

‘Hasn’t it come to your attention,’ she told them, ‘that our landlord sees fit to provide us with mattresses apparently filled with sand and gravel which, in places, congeal into concrete?’

Monday morning, the first of April. After sleeping undisturbed through the last night of March, Fen awakes and finds herself sprawled at a luxurious diagonal across her bed. With Radio 4 making her reverie all the more civilized, she cocoons herself in her duvet and stares at the window, whose frame is clearly visible through flimsy curtains. Pinch and a punch for the first of the month. What kind of idiot starts a new job on April Fool’s Day, Fen wonders as she gazes across her room?

After Thought for the Day, which Fen doesn’t think much of today, she leaves her bed and checks her reflection in the mirror.

My hair needs a wash. What do I feel like wearing? What ought I to wear? Do I dress for the weather? Or for the job?

She peers out through the curtains but soon enough she forsakes meteorological reasoning (it’s sunny and bright) for sky gazing instead. But that gets her nowhere so she goes to her cupboard and looks inside. Then she looks from the palm of her left hand to the palm of her right, as if reading one theory and then another, pros and cons; an idiosyncrasy that she knows causes friends and family much mirth and sometimes irritation, but which provides Fen with the answers she seeks. She regards her left hand.

It’s April, it’s positively spring-like. Time for my Agnès B skirt – bought in the sale and worn only once so far.

She looks at her right hand.

I’m an archivist. My office is to be a small room of dusty papers, acid-free boxes, brass paper-clips and shelving with sharp edges. There’ll be no one to see me in Agnès B.

She dons jeans.

‘I’ve hardly slept,’ Abi moans, sitting at the table-cum-storage-surface in the sitting-room-cum-dining-room, rubbing the small of her back and rolling her head cautiously from side to side, ‘bloody bloody bed.’

‘Ditto,’ Gemma says drowsily from the settee, holding a mug of hot tea, her eyes, though partially hidden by her mass of dark curls, drawn to breakfast TV with the volume off. ‘God, my head. Why do I invariably start the week as I end it – with a hangover? Why don’t I learn?’

‘I slept like a babe,’ says Fen, who has appeared at the foot of the stairs, ‘and awoke to a room spic, span and fragrant with Shake ’n’ Vac.’

Abi and Gemma regard their housemate, who looks annoyingly fresh herself both in countenance and clothing.

‘Take your halo—’ Abi starts.

‘—and shove it!’ Gemma concludes.

Fen grins and makes much of sashaying past both of them en route to the kitchen. ‘Toast?’

‘Can’t eat a thing,’ Gemma groans, ‘bloody hungover.’

‘Can’t eat a thing,’ Abi bemoans, ‘bloody on a diet.’

Fen returns with heavily buttered toast and takes a seat at the table next to Abi, balancing the plate on a pile of CDs which are themselves atop a heap of Sunday papers.

‘It’s one of life’s great injustices,’ Abi decrees, glowering at Fen’s plate, ‘that you basically have toast with your butter and you’re still slim and spot free. Bitch. I hate you.’

‘Hate you too,’ Fen says with her mouth full. The two of them sit affably and procrastinate over 14 Across in Saturday’s Guardian crossword.

‘And me,’ Gemma chips in, having been momentarily distracted by the weather girl’s quite staggering choice of lipstick, ‘I hate you.’

‘Hate you,’ Abi stresses non-specifically.

‘Hate you,’ Fen says with no malice and to no one in particular.

‘Hate hate you,’ Gemma recapitulates. And then they all laugh and sigh and say oh God, what are we like? Sigh some more and moan about Monday mornings.

‘Are we going to Snips this evening?’ Fen asks.

‘Yup. Every sixth week at six o’clock,’ Abi confirms.

‘Do you think it a bit odd,’ Gemma wonders, though her eyes are caught by TV presenters doing extraordinary things with sarongs, ‘our obsession with little rituals?’

‘It makes sense to have a communal outing to the hairdressers,’ Abi shrugs, analysing her housemates’ hair: Gemma’s ebony ringlets, Fen’s dark blonde long-top-crop. She twists pinches of her own hair, bleached and razor-cut short into pixie-like perfection. ‘It’s all about synchronization. What’s the point of spending time apart on the mundanities, when we can actually make them something of an institution?’

‘What, even the dentist?’ Gemma asks, turning away from the television, the sight of cooking in a bright studio kitchen making her decidedly queasy. ‘And leg waxing?’

‘Which reminds me,’ Abi says, stroking her calves.

‘Not yet!’ protests Gemma, for whom the pain of a leg wax is on a par with her fear of the dentist.

‘How did we manage to coincide our periods?’ Fen wonders, dabbing at toast crumbs and thinking she could do with another slice, were there another slice left to toast.

‘That’ll be the Moon Goddess,’ Abi says, very earnestly. ‘We’ll dance in her honour next time we’re on Primrose Hill.’

‘Abi,’ says Gemma, ‘you need help.’

‘I’m not going to bother to wash mine this morning then,’ says Fen.

‘Wash what?’ the other two shriek.

‘My hair – if we’re going to Snips.’ Fen fingers her locks gingerly. ‘Anyway,’ she reasons, ‘who’s going to see me in my little archive? Just a bunch of dead artists and benefactors.’

‘Are you excited?’ Abi asks, excited for her friend.

‘Nervous?’ Gemma asks, nervous for her friend.

Fen upends her right palm. ‘Nervous? Yes,’ she says. Then she upends her left palm. ‘Excited? Yes,’ she says. Then she clicks her fingers and punches the air: ‘But I get to have Julius all to myself!’

‘Bloody Julius,’ mutters Abi, when Fen has shut the front door behind her.

‘Bloody Julius,’ murmurs Gemma. ‘Fancy fancying a dead sculptor.’

Abi sighs. ‘It’s not the dead sculptor she’s obsessed with but some lump of marble he made in the shape of two people having a shag.’

‘Our Fen is way overdue a bonk,’ Gemma reasons.

‘So am I,’ Abi rues.

Gemma counts the months off on her fingers. ‘Er, and me.’

‘Maybe we should set aside some time and synchronize,’ says Abi.

THREE

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ’Tis woman’s whole existence.

Byron

Oh God. Oh Gawd. Oh Jesus. Matthew Holden has just woken up. The start to the day, to the week, could not be much worse. He has a hangover. He has a bad taste in his mouth. He’s late for work. And his ex-girlfriend is lying in bed next to him. With a contented smile on her sleeping face. He has a very bad taste in his mouth indeed. He tries closing his eyes but realizes that to stare at the ceiling, at the blooms of new paint on top of old, is far preferable to confronting all the current hassles of his life which parade around his mind’s eye as soon as his eyelids touch. Wake up. But he’s so damn tired. Wake up. Stay awake. Force eyes open. Monday. Monday. April Fool’s Day. Only this is no joke. No prank. He’s been a fool, full stop. It would be easier to just go back to sleep, slip into nothingness, to will it all to be a bad dream. However, while sleep might be a good antidote to his raging hangover, it won’t actually remedy the situation in hand or make it any less real. In fact, he’d have to wake again and do the whole oh God oh Gawd oh Jesus thing once more.

He daren’t move. Memory tells him that if he does, she’ll reach for him, claim him with encircling arms and clamping legs. Never let him go.

I wanted to get away.

The severity of his sigh is pronounced enough for her to turn to him, wrapping her limbs around him. She sighs herself. Triumphant.

Oh God. Oh Gawd. Oh Jesus no.

And then the phone starts to ring and Matt has an escape route though he knows in an instant that it is Jake’s mobile phone. He slithers from his bed and hurries through the flat, very naked.

Jake had, of course, answered his mobile phone. Jake was also late for work. But at least he was dressed. Jake just had a hangover, no ex-girlfriend in his bed. Not today. He had, in fact, bedded Matt’s ex-girlfriend. Quite recently. But never again. And not that Matt was to know. Certainly not today. Matt slumped into the armchair, placed a cushion over his dick and stuck two fingers up at Jake’s superciliously raised eyebrow. He couldn’t remember whether the clock on the mantelpiece was five minutes slow or five minutes fast. Whichever, he was categorically late. Jake had finished on the phone. He let his eyebrows soften though he refused to erase the vestiges of a smirk from his face. He sat down on the sofa. Though dressed, he placed a cushion across his crotch in a gesture of camaraderie.

‘Julia’s in my bed,’ Matt groaned, head in hands.

‘April Fool?’ Jake asked, in a vaguely hopeful way. Matt shook his head and cast his eyes to the ceiling. Only, unlike that in his bedroom, it had been replastered and repainted fairly recently and there were no hairline cracks or nuances of old against new paint to provide any welcome distraction.

Neutral nothingness.

It was realizing that I felt neutral nothingness that saw me finish a five-year relationship two months ago.

‘I could say,’ Jake mused, looking out of the window and deciding that it appeared to be spring-like enough to roll up shirtsleeves, ‘you’ve made your bed, now you must sleep in it.’

‘And my only reply would be, “I can’t, my ex-girlfriend is sprawled all over it”,’ Matt groaned.

‘How on earth did it happen?’ asked Jake.

Matt looked at him and couldn’t resist giving an elaborate, if quite medical, description of the sex act.

‘Really?’ Jake marvelled, playing along. ‘You put your weenie where?’

‘In a lady’s front bottom,’ Matt joshed.

‘How the hell did it happen?’ Jake asked again, seriously, stroking his goatee contemplatively.

Matt shook his head, shrugged and made a knocking-back-of-glasses motion before scratching his tufty cropped hair. ‘Oh God,’ he groaned, ‘oh Gawd. I’m late for work. Jesus.’

Clean, dry, if crumpled clothing in the washer-dryer provided Matt with no reason to go back to his bedroom. He dressed in the kitchen, hopping around trying to wriggle crumb-soled feet into odd socks. Shoes. Shoes? Matt had a rather sizeable shoe collection. But they were all under his bed. Jake had an enviable selection himself. Distributed quite evenly around the various rooms in their flat. Matt honed in on a pair of smart loafers behind the hi-fi.

‘Can I?’

‘What! My Patrick Cox? With those trousers?’

‘Excuse me – they’re Paul Smith, thank you.’

‘Well, that’s fine then.’

‘Cheers, mate.’

Though Jake could barely function without being fuelled by a hefty injection of caffeine, he left the cafetière full and smelling gorgeous so he could leave the flat with Matt. He didn’t want to be alone with a sobbing girl, nustling up to his neck, pleading for comfort and affection, advice and inside information. If he answered her direct questions with direct answers, she’d cry and nustle and need comfort and affection all the more. If he didn’t, she’d believe there was still a chance to rekindle the relationship with Matt. And he couldn’t do that to Matt. Plus, quietly, he found weeping women craving affection and comfort rather difficult to resist. And how she had sobbed that day a month or so ago. And they’d ended up in bed. And all the while, deludedly, he’d told himself he was performing not just a selfless act, but a charitable one which was useful too. He was doing it for Julia. He was doing it for Matt. A good distraction. Get her off his case. Help her get over him. Proof for her that she’s attractive to other men. Bla bla. Etcetera. When he had come, however, he had come to the more fitting conclusion.

Big mistake. Bad idea.

The two men stopped for bagels and coffee en route to Angel tube. Nourished by the former and woken up by the latter, they chatted.

‘Oh God,’ said Matt, ‘why, why, why?’

‘I’d’ve done the same, mate,’ said Jake.

‘But what now?’

‘Dunno? Give up drinking?’

‘You what?’

‘Celibacy?’

‘You what?’

‘Find a distraction,’ Jake concluded. ‘You can’t go on the rebound with your ex-girlfriend. It defeats the object of the exercise. You need a good old zipless fuck.’ Jake was rather proud of such logic despite his hangover and juggling a bagel, a coffee and a ringing mobile phone.

‘Who was that?’ Matt asked, when Jake had finished the call.

‘Your ex-girlfriend,’ Jake said, ‘asking me if she could stay at ours. That she’d clean the flat and have dinner awaiting our return from work. Asked whether she thought you’d like her to iron all your shirts. And change your sheets.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ Matt moaned, losing his appetite and throwing the bagel away, the coffee too – knowing nothing could help a headache whose provenance was now not alcohol driven.

‘Hey, Matt,’ Jake called, as they headed for their separate platforms.

Matt turned.

‘April Fool!’ Jake laughed, winking and making to pull an imaginary pistol. ‘It was just Jim on the phone. About five-a-side on Thursday.’

‘Wanker!’ Matt mouthed very clearly.

I did love her. Really love her. I was madly in love with her, for a while, way back when. But it faded. I didn’t really love her at all towards the end. I guess I kept hanging on in there because I was in love with the idea of it all. That it seemed easier to stay together than to split up. On a practical and emotional level. We went through months of arguing. And then months of indifference. Which was worse?

Matt! Pimlico station. You’re about to miss your tube stop.

Splitting up hurt. Though it was something that, amongst the acrimony and indifference, had seemed like a good idea, it still hurt. I was afraid that the decision was wrong. It took some getting used to, but I never actually missed her. Not Julia herself. Her position in my life, yes. The familiarity of having her, yes. But her? In person? No.

Matt! It’s a red pedestrian light and there’s a double-decker haring along Vauxhall Bridge Road towards you.

Oh God. Last night. It happened but it can’t happen again. Shit. It happened and it can’t happen again. Jake is right. I should take a leaf out of his book. Dip in here and there. Just like he does. Dips his dick here and there. No relationship-incumbent panoply. Have a laugh. Be light-hearted. I’m twenty-nine. Thirty soon. Rebound? Sure, whatever.

You’ve arrived at the Trust Art offices, Matt. And you’re following Fen McCabe along the corridor. You have no idea who she is. You’re too preoccupied to really notice anyway. You’re late. Not very seemly for the editor of the Trust’s bimonthly magazine, Art Matters. Don’t make a habit of it.

FOUR

Fen McCabe firmly believes one should trust art because art matters. Henry Holden, who died sixteen years ago aged eighty-three, founded Trust Art in 1938 specifically to enable national art institutions to acquire works of modern art by grant, bequest or gift. Since his death, the Trust has published a bi-monthly magazine, Art Matters. Fen is unsure whether this is Happy Coincidence or Fate though she has consulted her left palm and right for an answer. She thinks it has to be more than coincidence and fate that the man who founded the organization for which she now works also championed Julius Fetherstone, befriending the artist in the 1930s, buying his works and bequeathing them to British galleries. Fen feels that Henry Holden is somehow passing the baton on to her. Lucky Julius. Safe hands.

Along with the Arts Council and the National Art Collections Fund, Trust Art ensures that works of art which may otherwise be sold overseas, are given homes in galleries and museums in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. It has stayed true to its original aim of saving modern art for the nation.

Originally, Henry Holden was the only salaried member of staff. The other six workers were volunteers and all but one were the eyelash-fluttering sisters of his Oxford rowing fraternity; the odd one out being the mother of the cox. They were all utterly in love with Henry. All had double-barrel led surnames, flats in SW Somewhere and places ‘in the country’. Trust Art now employs fourteen people, of whom three are part-time and three are volunteers. Continuing the tradition, these three are minor aristocracy.

Trust Art has long been housed in a clutch of rooms which are part of the labyrinthine network in Tate Britain’s back buildings. Not for them the prestigious Millbank address or approach. You cannot see the Thames from Trust Art’s offices; the view from the John Islip Street windows is of the nicely maintained mansion blocks. There’s little more than a sandwich bar and a newsagent nearby and the shops at Victoria necessitate a veritable march; consequently little more than brief window-shopping during a lunch-hour is possible. Fen is quite relieved that most her earnings will see their way into her bank account, and not be squandered on some impulsive lunch-time purchase, as Gemma’s and Abi’s invariably are.

Fen had arrived at her new job a full quarter of an hour before her contractual start time. And that was with a delay in a tunnel just after Camden Town. There was a veritable welcome brigade awaiting her. If she analysed the palm of her left hand, she was really rather embarrassed by the fuss. Her right hand, however, said that she was quietly rather flattered. Amongst the croissants and coffee set out in the boardroom-cum-library, Fen soon realized that it was all at the whim of Rodney Beaumont, the director of Trust Art; not so much to welcome her as to indulge himself. Consequently, watching him tuck into pastries and talk animatedly about anything but shop with his staff, made Fen feel much less conspicuous. And it was nice to meet the fourteen staff who, it soon occurred to Fen, were as diverse as the art the Trust was saving for the nation.

From Fundraising, three girls with pearls, hearts of gold and hyphenated surnames provided a nice contrast with the two dowdy accountants, sweet but dull, with little interest in art but a near-obsessive passion for stretching the Trust’s funds in all directions. The sober Acquisitions team, essentially art historians rather than administrators, dressed demurely and talked art earnestly with Fen, in hushed tones and with much eye contact. The two women in Membership could double for headmistress and hockey captain and Fen found herself promising them that she’d deliver Trust Art leaflets to all the streets within walking distance of her own.

Fen particularly liked Bobbie, the receptionist, who was clad in an extraordinary polka-dot ensemble as daring for a woman in her fifties as for an institution as seemingly staid as Trust Art. Bobbie was as categorically Cockney as Rodney Beaumont (who looked like an extra in a Merchant Ivory production of any Evelyn Waugh novel) was wholly Home Counties. He lolloped around the room like a young labrador, or an overgrown schoolboy (though he must be nearing fifty), tucking into the croissants. Fen mused that there were probably conkers and catapults and dusty pieces of chocolate in his pockets. He was affable and ingenuous and kept grinning at Fen, sticking his thumbs up or saying crikey! what goodies you are going to unearth! terrifically exciting, terrifically!

And then a tall man, much her own age and appearing to be constructed from pipe-cleaners and drinking straws, such was his thinness, introduced himself. Sidling up to her, he ate his croissant in a silent and contemplative fashion whilst visibly assessing Fen from top to toe. After much teeth sucking and de-crumbing of fingers, he smacked his lips, held out his hand and made her acquaintance.

‘Otter. I’m Otter. Charmed to meet you,’ he said in a voice so camp that Fen initially thought he was putting it on.

‘What do you do here?’ Fen asked, wanting to stroke his hand for fear of breaking it on shaking it. ‘And why are you called Otter?’

‘I work in Publications,’ he said, running bony fingers through a surprisingly dense flop of sand-blond hair, ‘and I am called Otter because Gregory John Randall-Otley is a mouthful.’ He paused, licked his lips and leant in close. ‘A fucking mouthful,’ he bemoaned. ‘Anyway, what sort of a name is Fen, then?’

Fen whispered, ‘It’s short for Fenella.’

Suddenly, she felt utterly buoyant; as if she’d just been afforded a glimpse, via coffee and croissants and people coming to say hullo, of future fun to be had at work. Fen had been excited enough about the job itself and now she discovered, almost as an added bonus, colleagues so affable. On the face of it, backgrounds were distinctly contrary and yet (hopefully not just on the face of it) the staff of Trust Art seemed non-judgemental, genuine and unconditionally friendly. Apart from Judith St John, deputy director, whose steely exterior and somewhat cursory handshake Fen had told herself must just be an unfortunate manner, surely.

‘And when are you Fenella?’ asked the man called Otter. ‘Only on very special occasions?’

‘I am only ever Fen,’ she declared, pausing for effect, ‘unless I’m being told off.’