Subversion. With style
“Are you sure about this, Juliette?” said Mila. She worried
her hair with one hand and bent her pencil with the other. The pencil snapped
and the two halves fell on the floor. “Oh shit,” she said, and bent to retrieve
them.
“Quite sure,” replied the Dean. “Let him see that we’re not
a hotbed of subversion.”
“But we are,” said Brian.
“Well just for that one day, we won’t be, OK?” The Dean, Juliette, fiddled with the mouse of her laptop; there was a large TV in the corner of the Senior Common Room and she was linked to it over the WiFi, but this almost never worked first time and she was mildly surprised to see the beginning of the video she had cued up, a recording from a recent news programme on the regional BBC channel. “I suggest we take him to Mila’s class and he can see that the History of Art in Society course is taught to high standards. Then he can go to Sculpture in History and see what Brian’s students are up to.”
A TV studio appeared on screen. It was a morning chat show.
“And then we can take him to Patrick’s fashion lecture,”
said Juliette.
There was a sound from the corner of the room, a sort of
“Nrrrgh” followed by a grunt. Patrick was sprawled in a collapsing old
armchair, his long limbs draped where they’d fallen when he sank into it at the
end of the morning’s teaching.
 |
A Girl with a Mirror, an Allegory of Profane Love (1627). Paulus Moreelse (1571-1638) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
“Listen to what this Headdick man says,” said Juliette.
“Are our universities and colleges serving us well?” said
the presenter on the screen, her lip gloss glistening in the studio lights.
“Bancaster North’s MP, Tony Headdick, doesn’t think so. He has launched an
attack on Bancaster School of Art and Design for what he calls ‘woke nonsense’.
Good morning, Tony.”
“Good morning,” said Headdick, frowning gravely.
“Now, Tony, what exactly is your complaint?”
“Apart from the lecturers, as well as students, with pink
and green hair?” said Headdick. He was a thickset man in his 50s, not tall,
with a stubbly chin and bushy eyebrows; he had a nasal rainforest. His gaze
darted around the studio. “I want to understand why they teach so little that
is best about Britain, and England, and encourage students to believe the worst
about us all the time. And why don’t they teach good art? All this silly woke
nonsense.”
“I don’t think Patrick is woke,” said Brian. “He appears to
have gone to sleep.” He poked Patrick’s leg with his foot.
“I am woke,” said Patrick. “Where did they find this
pillock? I hope I never meet him.”
“You’re going to,” said Juliette. “He’s visiting on Tuesday
and he’s going to sit in on some of your teaching.”
“Juliette, are you sure that’s a good idea?” said Mila
again. She reached for her coffee mug, missed and spilled lukewarm coffee on
the carpet. “Oh shit,” she said.
*
The following Tuesday Juliette stood on the pavement at the
north end of the pedestrian footbridge over the River Ban, which flowed through
Bancaster’s city centre and past the Faculty building. She was waiting for
Headdick, who was late. She was tired; she had been awake overnight, to cover
for a carer who could not come. Her head hurt a little and her eyelids were
heavy.
At length a black Range Rover drew up and disgorged Headdick.
He got out of the back seat looking very much as he had on TV, although his
nasal hair had grown slightly. He was followed by Councillor Clark, the leader
of his party group on the City Council, a small man in a cheap suit. They saw a
fairly tall, slim woman of about 40 with honey-blonde hair drawn back across
her scalp to a ponytail, secured by a black velvet ribbon; she was subtly made
up and wore a trim-fitting black wool suit and black strapped sandals with a
moderate stiletto heel. She had a string of pearls and matching earrings.
“Bloody hell, is that the Dean,” said Clark in a stage
whisper. “Phwoarr, I wouldn’t mind, eh?”
“Neither would I but she’s probably a lezzer,” said
Headdick. “Anyway, better be polite, eh.” He advanced with hand outstretched.
“Tony Headdick,” he grunted.
“Juliette Bouchard,” she replied, and took his hand. “I am
the Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design. I am delighted to meet you.”
“Bouchard?” said Headdick. “I can’t place your accent. Are
you English?”
“No, I am from Montreal. My mother is anglophone; my father
was a French speaker, but I studied at McGill.”
Headdick frowned. “There were no English applicants for the
job?”
“I am sure there were,” she replied. “Selection boards for
this type of post want a very specific skillset, and may seek it abroad.
Anyway, please do come with me.”
They crossed the footbridge over the River Ban, which caught
the morning sunlight; the willows hung in a rich curtain above the water and
the Victorian mass of the School, a former mill, was reflected in the slow
waters, along with the odd white cloud from the early-autumn sky. It was a
beautiful morning but Juliette felt uneasy, and remembered, the day before,
that she had walked across this bridge and seen Brian and Patrick sitting on
the benches by the river in close conversation with several students. One of
them was a beautiful dark-skinned young woman called Shirl. She had large
breasts. Something told Juliette that this might be important.
Out loud she said: “May I take you for coffee in the Senior
Common Room before we go round the classes?” Councillor Clark seemed about to
accept but Headdick brusquely refused.
“Then I might as well take you to Mila’s History of Art
in Society class.”
Headdick harrumphed at the word ‘Society’. He followed
Juliette down the corridor, noting her long legs and slim, graceful hips.
She knocked on a studded oak door and pushed it open. Mila’s
students were seated in a semicircle around her. The walls were hung with
carefully spaced posters and reproductions. On one wall was a large poster
advertising an exhibition called Women’s Images of Men at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts some decades earlier. Mila herself stood by a large flat
screen hung on the end wall. She was thirtyish, small, and pretty with a large
nose stud, a cheek piercing and pink hair, and wore dungarees. Headdick
stiffened at the sight of her. Clark looked at her breasts. “Hello,” she
smiled, “I’m Mila Dalmaans.”
Headdick grunted. He seemed disinclined to take the hand
that Mila half-offered him.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Utrecht,” she said, and smiled again.
Headdick turned to Juliette. “Do you ever recruit in
England?” he asked.
“Mila is a noted writer and researcher on art and feminism,”
said Juliette. “Her publications record is stellar, and fits our curriculum
well. We were lucky to get her.” She turned to Mila. “Please do continue.”
Mila turned back to the screen; she had an LED pointer in
her hand. She clicked on to the next slide and there was a painting of a woman in
a factory, before a long machine, lifting a spool off its frame. The woman wore
a long grey dress. Her face was tired and her feet were bare.
“Anyone tell me something about this picture?” she asked.
There was silence for a moment and then someone said, “Gouache. It’s early 20th
century, isn’t it?”
“It is. The artist may surprise you. It’s the feminist campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst,” said Mila. A wave of interest went through the room. “We do not think of her as an artist but she was; she trained at the Royal College of Art and might have pursued it as a career. From what she wrote later, she felt it would have been – how shall I put it – an indulgence to do so. Life, she felt, had a harder edge. But I wonder if she was right.”
She waved her arm at the screen.
“The woman is changing a bobbin in a Glasgow
cotton mill. It is from a series she painted there and in the Potteries in
1907, Women Workers of England. It was done for the Women’s Social and
Political Union, a suffragist and social campaigning body set up by her mother
Emmeline and sister Christabel.”
Juliette sensed Headdick tensing beside her.
 |
| Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960): Glasgow Cotton Spinning Mill: Changing the Bobbin (1907). Tate Gallery |
Mila went on, “Pankhurst would later describe ‘the almost deafening noise of the machinery and the oppressive heat’ in the Glasgow cotton mills, which was ‘so hot and airless that I fainted within an hour.’ Much later, in the late 1930s, she contributed a chapter to Margot Asquith’s anthology Myself When Young, in which a number of prominent women talked of their early lives and dreams. Remembering her journey to the Potteries in 1907, she wrote: ‘What a grey desolation, an utter neglect of human life. The elementary decencies of housing and sanitation were all defied.’”
Juliette became aware that Headdick was making a sort of
spluttering sound, like a motor succumbing to fuel starvation. “I must
protest,” he rasped. “This is nothing more than socialist propaganda.”
“It’s history, isn’t it?” said one of the students with an
innocent air.
“Those men who left their families behind were damn well
doing their duty, fighting for King and Country,” Headdick said, in what was
not quite a shout.
“Then the poverty they left behind did not matter?”
“I did not say that.”
“Then what were you saying?” Mila turned back to the screen
and raised the pointer. “Anyway, I should like to show you a picture of Sylvia.
It was taken around 1911.” A sepia portrait appeared of a woman with large,
liquid eyes and a commanding gaze. Clark went a little weak at the knees.
“My goodness,” he said, “she was rather beautiful.”
“You can’t say that here,” said Headdick. “They’re all woke.
They’ll call you a sexist pig.”
“Well actually,” said Mila, “I too find that portrait so
compelling – as a gay woman – well, actually I’m sort of bi…“
“Oooh, Mila,” said one of the students. “I didn’t know you
leaned both ways. I do too.”
“Do you?” said Mila. She dropped the pointer device. ”Oh
shit.”
“I’ve heard enough,” said Headdick. He pulled the door open
with a savage gesture but did not realise it was spring-loaded; as he stormed
through the doorway the heavy oak door sprang back and caught him a vicious
blow on the shoulder. “Dammit,” he yelled and went on into the corridor without
holding the door for Councillor Clark, who followed him but turned for a moment
to look wistfully at the sepia face on the screen that stared back across a
century with a mix of love, command, contempt and compassion.
*
Headdick was persuaded to stay. “You really must see one or
two more lectures, and have a rounded view,” said Juliette. Her urbanity and
warmth prevailed although she did not feel as confident as she appeared; God,
she thought, I hope Brian’s not preaching sedition today.
She pushed open the door of his lecture room to find Module
II, Lecture III of Sculpture in History in full swing. The large room
was fairly dark; a number of reproduction sculptures stood around, mostly
small. Brian was holding one and showing it to his class. “And this is the Roman
one with the Bernini mattress,” he was saying. Oh, thank God, the classics,
thought Juliette.
“Mr Headdick,” she said out loud, “Mr Clark, I would like
you to meet Brian O’Flaherty.”
“Top of the morning to you,” said Brian. He was short, wide
and muscular with a jet-black beard and piercing blue eyes.
Headdick turned to Juliette. “Do you really have no English
teaching staff at all?” he demanded.
“Brian is from County Fermanagh,” she replied. “It is in the
United Kingdom.”
“Though actually,” Brian began, “I’m an Ir – “
“Do please continue,” said Juliette smoothly. “We don’t want
to interrupt you.”
“Indeed.” Brian turned back to his class and held up a small
reproduction sculpture; a large picture of it appeared on the screen behind
him. “We don’t know its origin for sure but the figure is thought to be a Roman
copy of a work by the second century BCE Greek sculptor Polycles. It’s
generally called the Sleeping Hermaphroditus.”
Juliette felt a chill in her stomach.
“In ancient methodology, Hermaphroditus was born a boy,”
said Brian. “But as a result of an attempted rape by the nymph Salmacis, he
became what was traditionally called a hermaphrodite.”
“You mean he was trans?” asked one of the students.
“Not exactly. He, or she, had sexual characteristics that
defied binary gender definition. Today we would probably prefer the term
intersex, as hermaphrodite is regarded as offensive by some.”
Juliette held her head in her hand for a second or two. She
could feel Headdick tensing up beside her again and was sure he had growled
like a mastiff. Clark was staring open-mouthed at a student with a low-cut top.
“Why am I talking of this? Well, it is a good place to start
on the role of androgyny in art history,” said Brian. “It has always reflected
the ambivalence that society has always had over binary sexuality. This goes back to
the depiction of Queen Hatsheput, who shared the Egyptian throne in the 15th
century BCE. In fact it goes further; we know that in Sumeria, the priests of
the goddess Inanna adopted female roles, and we think they had sex with other
men. Today’s changing gender roles are nothing new and sculpture reflects
that.”
“For Heaven’s sake,” muttered Headdick. He stood up. “What are you teaching here? Subversion, sexual ambivalence?”
“Art at its best reflects the world as it is, not as we
somehow feel it should be, Mr Headdick,” he replied. “It makes no judgement. It
is a mirror. It tells us that gender fluidity, like so much else, is as old as
the species itself.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Headdick said once again. “Ms – er –
Bouchard, is there anything else you wish me to see? I must warn you that my
report to the City Council will be negative.”
You’re not even on the Council, she thought. Councillor Clark was, but
wasn’t listening; he was casting a backward glance at the student in the
low-cut top. Then he hurried behind.
*
They joined Patrick’s lecture halfway through. He was more
formal; the students sat on benches and he stood on a dais at the bottom of the
theatre beside the large screen, changing the slides now and then with a laptop
on the table beside him. He looked round as the door behind him opened and
Juliette stepped in. Headdick looked coldly at the very tall black man with the
dreadlocks.
“Where is this one from?” he asked Juliette. “Jamaica?”
“Streatham,” said Patrick. “Do sit down.” He waited a moment
while the three arranged themselves in the front bench, which was empty – as
everyone knows, there is a quirk of crowd dynamics that stops people from
sitting at the front.
“Delighted you could join us,” he said politely. “I am
teaching one of the core modules for the second-year Art and Design course. We
look at fashion and how it reflects the world around us, the demands it makes
upon us and the resources it consumes. Many of our students will work in the
rag trade later, and it is important for them to understand all this.”
Headdick emitted a trademark grunt. Clark’s gaze was fixed
on a young woman sitting near the front. She was very beautiful. Also, she had
large breasts.
Juliette noticed her too. She felt uneasy.
Patrick continued his lecture. On his screen was a painting
of a young woman in Edwardian dress. Her evening grown tumbled in thick layers
to the carpet; an ornate fringe adorned the bust and elaborate, detailed bands
encircled her waist and her hips.
“A word on the picture, or you will wonder who it is,” said
Patrick. “It is from 1904 and is a lovely portrait. It is by Byam Shaw, a noted
illustrator and painter who was sadly to die in the Spanish flu epidemic, still
in his 40s. The subject is his sister-in-law, Isabel Codrington, who was
herself an artist; in fact, one of greater importance than Shaw. But that is
for another lecture.
“What I wish you to note is the very elaborate nature of her
gown. What does it tell us?”
“That she didn’t wear it in the street,” said someone. ”In
1904 it would have trailed in all the horseshit.”
There was a murmur of laughter.
“She’s very pretty,” said someone else.
“She was. Ezra Pound wrote her a love poem,” said Patrick.
“It was a lousy poem. But it was Ezra Pound. Anyway, back to the gown. Look at
the detailing, the sheer mass of fabric, the amount of stitching that would be
required for a gown to be worn perhaps twice or three times a year. She was
then married to Paul Konody, an art critic and writer of some distinction and I
guess some wealth.”
 |
| Isabel Codrington (1904), by Byam Shaw (1872-1919) |
“Clothes are a mark of class then,” said someone. “But didn’t it also mean cheap labour?”
“Exactly. A Lords committee in 1890 found a woman making
shirts for which she was paid 7d a dozen; not a lot, even then. She earned a
shilling and tuppence – about 6p – a
day; it was a 12-hour day. Every week she paid 2/6d – two shillings and
sixpence – for the hire of her sewing machine. Seamstresses and dressmakers
worked in poor light with poor ventilation, and often had an inadequate diet.
This is what enabled the fashions that we see in a picture such as – “
“Why are you so negative?” said Headdick. The question
emerged as a sort of strangled bark. He slammed his fist on the desk in front
of him. “None of you have a good thing to say about us, do you? Our culture,
our history, our achievements – just all this nasty sneering woke stuff is all
you can serve up. And the woman is always better than the man.”
“It’s about the lives people lead, Mr Headdick,” said
Patrick.
“Then. Not now. Why dredge up some rant about Victorian
poverty now, in the present day?”
“The world,” said Patrick, “does not change.” And Juliette
saw – Headdick did not – that he had inclined his head towards Shirl, who stood
and slowly began to unbutton her blouse.
“What?” said Headdick. Councillor Clark looked on, his mouth agape; a
thin string of saliva stretched between his lips.
Shirl slipped her blouse off her shoulders, revealing a very
large bust in a black lacy bra. She grasped the collar of the blouse and made a
show of looking at the label.
“Cambodia,” she announced.
The girl next to her was removing her T-shirt. “Bangladesh!”
she yelled.
“What about the bra, Shirl?” yelled someone. “Can we undo it
and see the label?”
“No you can’t, you cheeky sod,” she said.
Juliette became aware that all the students were stripping
off their upper garments and peering at the labels.
“China!” a voice called.
“Vietnam!”
“India!”
“Shanghai!”
“Ethiopia!”
“Nanjing!”
“Now do you understand?” Patrick turned to his guests.
“Nothing’s changed. Nothing, not since Isabel Codrington stood there in her
finery. The poverty’s still there. We’ve just exported it. That’s all. Do you
understand?”
“I’ve heard enough!” shouted Headdick, for the third time
that morning. He stood up. The students were waving their tops around,
giggling. “Come on,” he snapped at Clark, who was still gazing, transfixed, at
Shirl. He marched out of the door behind the dais, Clark rushing to catch up.
Juliette hesitated, then followed them.
“Right, that’s enough,” Patrick boomed at the lecture
theatre, and the noise subsided. “Well done, everyone. Good job. Shirl, thank
you for deploying substantial assets to the front in this crucial battle.”
Shirl was buttoning her blouse. “I hope you’re going to buy
us all a pint for this, you mean git,” she said.
“No. Yes. Well, maybe,” he said. To the room in general, he
called, “You lot might as well bugger off to the Kings Head for a pint.”
“Are you coming?” asked Shirl.
“I think,” he said, “that I had better face the Dean.”
*
Juliette had followed the two men down the corridor but they
had not noticed. She had nearly caught up with them when she heard Councillor Clark say:
“What a pity. Such a lovely woman.”
“What, the dark one with the big knockers?”
“No. Well, her as well. But that Juliette woman. I wouldn’t
mind giving her one.”
Headdick got his phone out to summon the black Range Rover.
“I wonder if anyone does,” he said. “Whether there’s a husband or a boyfriend,
I mean. I reckon her husband needs to give her a good shagging more often.”
“Mr Headdick,” said a voice behind them. Startled, Headdick
turned to see Juliette standing right behind him. “My husband,” she said, “had
a motorcycle accident. He is a paraplegic.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she continued. “It has been
so nice to meet you. I hope you have enjoyed your visit to our college.” She
held her hand out and both men took it briefly. Then they turned and left the
building.
She stood and watched them go for a moment, then returned to
the lecture theatre. She found herself against the tide as knots of Patrick’s
students, all laughing, hurried for the King’s Head. By the time she reached
the theatre it was empty but for Patrick, slumped in a chair on the dais, his
long limbs strewn awkwardly in front of him. She stood halfway down the theatre
and looked at him.
“Why?” she said.
“What.”
“Why make mischief like that. You. Brian. Even Mila, God
bless her, though she didn’t mean to.”
“You know why,” he said.
He sat up straight, thought for a moment then said: “I’m sorry, Juliette. We weren’t trying
to hurt you. Bryan is from the border. He grew up during the Troubles, wondering when the Prots
would get him or beat him up, or his own side if he didn’t join ‘the boys’. I
grew up in South London. When I was 12 some kids from my school cornered me on
my way home and beat me with a brick. I had concussion. They were crying, ‘Hit
the black kid. Hit the n******’. ‘Cos that’s what they do, see. That’s what we
learned. Bullies always come back. Never kneel down or they’ll be back. You
must make an ass of them. Do you see?”
They said nothing for a minute or so.
He looked at her. “How’s Don?”
“He has a chest infection. They’re drip-feeding him
antibiotics. We have to move him in the night to prevent his chest from getting
congested.”
She sat down on one of the benches. “He was asking after
you. When he’s better, he’d love to see you. He likes to argue with you.”
Patrick smiled. “I’d like that too. I’ll come.”
She smiled back, a little uncertain.
“We’ll be all right, Juliette. They won’t be back.”
“If they are,” she said, “I’ll deal with them. As best I can.”
She stood and left the theatre. As she did so she passed
under a skylight; the midday sun lit the motes of dust as she walked past, and
her hair shone in its rays.
 |
| Sylvia Pankhurst, around 1911 (Library of Congress) |
More flash fiction from Mike:
