Life Class

The tall mirrors in which the heads of smokers, drinkers, and talkers were endlessly and elaborately reflected, the laughter, the bare shoulders of the women, the pall of blue smoke above the clustered heads, the sense of witty, significant things being said by interesting people—it was a world away from his poky little rooms in St. Pancras. A world away from home, too.

[…] How sleek and glossy they all were compared to the creatures who lived in the streets around his lodgings, scurrying about in their soot-laden drizzle, the women so tightly wrapped they seemed to be bundles of clothes walking. This was another England and, passing between the two, he was aware of a moment’s dislocation, not unlike vertigo.

Art had always been Somewhere Else. There flashed into his mind a memory of the back room in the Vane Arms, blue smoke, the rumble of dominos being shuffled, knobbly hands, liver spotted, necks like tortoises’, blank, incommunicative faces, terse greetings: “Now then,” “All right?” and the cold northern light coming in through frosted glass windows. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the scraping of dominoes on the tables. Which was also, come to think of it, the sound of the Café Royal. He’d never painted those men or even thought of doing so till now.

In comparison with this his own work was immature, and he couldn’t understand why. He wasn’t particularly young for his age. His mother’s long illness and early death had forced him to grow up and take on responsibility. So this maturity of vision in a man whom he found distinctly childish in many respects bewildered him. Living at home, spoiled, self-pitying, moaning on because his mother didn’t pay him enough attention––for God’s sake! The work and the man seemed to bear no relation to each other. And the contrast was all the more painful because Neville was painting the landscape of Paul’s childhood. These paintings were the fruit of a trip up north to seek out the same smoking terraces and looming ironworks that Paul had turned his back on every Sunday, cycling off into the countryside in search of Art.

He hated the way Elinor and Tarrant were approaching this. There was a smugness about it, a feeling of “Oh, well, you know, this is the real England.” Bollocks. There was some excuse for Elinor, she’d grown up in the country, but what about Tarrant? If this was the real England, what did he think Middlesbrough was? A mirage? Neville wiped sweat from his chin. His scalp prickled. […] no, no, no, NO, this was not the real England. At that moment he’d have liked nothing better than to be back in London, in Charing Cross or Liverpool Street, flakes of soot on his skin, grit in his eyes, advertising everywhere, steam, people, pistons turning. Anything to escape from the clamorous boredom of trees.

I stood at the bottom step looking into the drawing room and saw the red walls and the chandelier lit and all the heads bobbing up and down and a great stamping of feet […]. I thought, either they’re sane and the rest of the world’s gone mad or…? It was silly and splendid and I didn’t know if I was part of it or not, or even if I wanted to be. I thought about the dead people lying on the cobbles. The dead child. I think about them all the time, but crying won’t bring them back.