Sunday, after a late breakfast and a lazy time with the papers, Brian got me out of my clothes again for some serious work. He tore off a large sheet from a big roll of brown wrapping paper and pinned it to a cork board which he put up on the easel.
‘I haven’t seen that before,’ I said.
‘I’m going to work with brush and ink and casein paint,’ he said. ‘It helps me to loosen up.’
I did twenty-minute poses and we worked for an hour before I rested. Brian had put up a new sheet of brown paper for each pose, so there were three of them lying on the floor. They were nothing like the Conté sketches he’d done of Cheryl; they were big and free but at the same time quite delicate. Full of tenderness, really, and the most sensitive nudes he’d ever done. ‘These are beautiful,’ I said. ‘They’re so different from your drawings of Cheryl.’
‘Are you surprised?’ he said, looking at me with his good eye foremost. Hearing what was in his voice I backed away a little and said, ‘Better not.’
‘Better not what?’ he said.
‘Get serious.’
‘Why not? My feelings can’t be that much of a surprise to you.’
Those were almost the same words he’d used when he’d tried to rape me the first time I posed for him. ‘Stop right there,’ I said. ‘Put your heart back in your pants or I’m out of here.’
Brian found it hard to believe that I was rejecting his love. ‘Can you do better?’ he said. Always the pragmatist.
‘Maybe I already have,’ I said. I gathered up my clothes, got dressed and left.
7 Phil Ockerman
I hadn’t done anything but talk to Constanze — although I’d have liked to do more — and I’d no reason at all to feel guilty; in any case Barbara was shacked up with another man and for all I knew I might never see her again. But I did feel guilty, I felt that I had betrayed my density woman. Destiny woman. Both words are formed with the same letters and density is a big part of destiny. Your mind takes hold of something and it can feel whether the fabric is dense or thin: books, movies, music — anything. People.
Troy Wallis was much in my mind. In my youth I’d walked away from more fights than I’d taken on but I couldn’t walk away from this one indefinitely. There was the Louisville Slugger leaning in the corner, tangible proof of my commitment — to myself as much as to Barbara. What if I’d never see her again? It seems I didn’t really believe that. Courage was wanted from me, heroism even. Had I ever in my life done anything heroic? I’d once confronted three teenage louts who were making very noisy lewd remarks in the Chelsea Odeon while Mimi and I were there to see Interview with the Vampire. When I told them they were spoiling the film for the rest of us I got a blast of four-letter words and threats. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘You’re so tough, let me have your names so I’ll know who you are.’
More verbal abuse followed this. ‘We’ll see you outside later,’ said the senior lout. But they were quiet after that and they left before the end of the film. ‘What are you going to do if they’re waiting out there?’ said Mimi as we left. ‘I’ll try to look like a figure of authority,’ I said. But they weren’t waiting. My bluff had apparently convinced them that I was a figure of authority. But that wasn’t real heroism. I’d been reading about Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar and I imagined those great wind-driven wooden fortresses coming slowly downwind through the French line: HMS Victory, Temeraire, Royal Sovereign and the others moving towards the moment when the marksman in the mizzen top of the Redoutable would aim for the stars on Nelson’s coat. Nelson had to display himself in full regalia on the quarterdeck when the battle was at its height — that was part of what made him an inspiration to his men. At the age of eleven, considering his career prospects and the lack of any useful connections, he had written, ‘Well then, I will be a hero, and confiding in Providence I will brave every danger.’ But his crew above and below decks, men with no stars on their coats, many of them shirtless as they served their guns — they were too busy for displays; it was simply their job to be heroic, even the powder monkeys who might never reach puberty: there was nothing else to be, and in the heat of battle they were hooked up with the necessary violence in them, that practical violence that I’d never reached in myself.
I needed to walk the decks of HMS Victory. I needed to touch with my hands those great guns; I needed to stand in the orlop deck at the place where Nelson died. A visit to Portsmouth was what I needed. HMS Victory might seem a long way from the crypt at St James’s Clerkenwell, even farther away from seventeenth-century Venice and Barbara Strozzi but, seen from Mercury and Venus as they look down on us, nothing is far away from anything.
On a dull and sultry day in July I went to Waterloo and took a South West train to Portsmouth Harbour. I seem to run into that kind of day when I’m looking for some hard-to-find thing, like a left-handed monkey wrench or whatever. After being nowhere for a while the train found Guildford. Then gradually the views on both sides became fields and trees and the sky seemed to widen. Time moved slowly and was further slowed down by the many mothers who were patiently reading to their children, playing games with them and feeding them snacks. The buffet car sent its nice little earner through the carriages with many kinds of overpriced refreshment but I’d brought my sandwich and bottle of water with me and was able to resist when the trolley paused for me.
Haslemere and other stations unrolled before and behind in due course while I read a book about Bellerophon, the seventy-four-gun ship of the line in Nelson’s fleet known as Billy Ruffian to the sailors. Designed by Thomas Slade who also laid down the lines for HMS Victory, she was built in 1782 in the yard of Edward Greaves at Frindsbury in the River Medway in Kent. I’d received this book from a friend, and having nothing on HMS Victory I made do with the smaller vessel. More than three thousand oak trees were cut down to make the frames, strakes, beams, carlings, masts, yards and spars that with axe, saw, adze and drawknife were shaped and assembled into Billy Ruffian.
After my lunch I dozed off for a while and awoke when the train pulled into Petersfield. The sky was heavying up in a brooding sort of way and I had no doubt that its intentions were serious. Time now speeded up a little and Portsmouth Harbour was achieved, flaunting a vertical blot on the seascape that was clearly commissioned by one of those committees that can’t leave anything alone. I learned later that it’s called the Spinnaker Tower.
When I came out of the station I expected to see or at least hear gulls wheeling over the harbour but there were none. It was a half-mile or so from the railway station to HMS Victory, past HMS Warrior, various naval buildings, small craft moored in the harbour and a succession of eateries, boat-ride docks and other tourist attractions barnacled on to the dockyard along with a pub whose name I don’t remember, the Royal Naval Museum and a shop that sold HMS Victory books, videos, and every kind of souvenir that England could expect. It was raining by then as it usually does when I’m looking for a left-handed monkey wrench or heroic inspiration.
Having bought my ticket I walked on glistening cobbles, along with the world and his camera, wife and children, towards the masts and rigging of Nelson’s flagship which became gradually larger in our eyes as we approached. A life-size effigy of Nelson, a flat thing made of painted sheet metal, encouraged us to continue yet another half-mile or so to the queue waiting at the entrance to the ship.