Life Class 1967 Chapter 9 Life with Kevin

 



Chapter 9   Life with Kevin.

   It’s not easy to hitch-hike as a couple with a dog so it took us some

time to get up to Nottingham. On the way we got over a fence and had a

swim in someone’s pool, Kevin’s idea of course.
 
On arrival in Nottingham Kevin had the daunting experience of

immediately meeting George, my ex, who’d moved in next door. The

next day he encountered two other men who seemed on very good

terms with me. I wouldn’t have liked it in reverse.

   
The Goose fair was just setting up down the road and Kevin went off

and secured a job there working on the roundabout the one with the

bright shiny horses with real horse hair tails and big cockerels, with

music from an organ where the tunes were on big cards with holes in

and it seemed almost always to be playing ‘On Mother Kelly’s doorstep’.

I had never been on one of these roundabouts before but now I got

unlimited free rides. Kevin was such a good worker that the family that

ran the roundabout asked him to come with them as a permanent 

fairground worker, and I would be welcome also.

  It was a wild idea, but I didn’t really consider it, I wanted to complete my

degree. Kevin was happy enough not to go, he found work here and

there. He changed tyres on tractors and came home on his motorcycle

with a rabbit for dinner stuffed into his overalls and then he tried to stuff

its head but it got magotty and had to be discarded.
   
Kevin got used to coming into the art college, met all the students and

helped me with the sculpture I was making of ‘urban grass’ which was

made of long thin sections of ply wood attached to bricks. He pointed

out helpfully that the reason I could not saw the plywood effectively was

not as I assumed because I was useless at woodwork but because the

saw was blunt and the woodwork assistant was too lazy to help. He got

a wonderful wild-looking sheepskin coat, grew his hair a bit longer, went

to french films and Warhol’s ‘Chelsea Girls’ and ate frquently at the

University.

    
  One day we were going to make love with me dressed in very liitle but

a feather boa when Kevin remembered he had to collect a motorcycle

part from a nearby garage and it would be shut soon, so he said to wait

there on the sofa and he’d be back in a jiffy. While he was out he forgot

all about me waiting and ran into an unpleasant liitle bloke who also had 

worked on the fair and asked him back for tea.I heard him coming in

talking and flew across the room to stop them coming in.
   
  Occasionally I went over to see my parents, without Kevin. Our

relationship was a secret, which Kevin wasn’t happy about.

  I was in the kitchen chatting to my Mother when the doorbell went and

Kevin staggered in, drunk as a skunk. He confronted my surprised Dad

and slurred out that he was living with me, he loved me and he wanted

them to know. My Father went silent and sank into his chair as if he’d

been hit. It seemed he could not speak. My Mother said she’d known

there was something going on in Brighton. As it happened I’d been

telling her about a friend who was living with her boyfriend, seeing how

she took it, which was quite calmly, she was aware that times had

changed.
 
 However, Dad didn’t seem to be aware of this. Eventually he said, ‘In

my day some people did things like that but we simply didn’t speak to

them”
   
I was happy, proud of Kevin in a way, even if he was pissed as a newt. It

was sweet the way he said he loved me. He’d already asked me to

marry him, even more since we’d been to Dick and Helen’s wedding,

friends from across the road. They got married in the register office in 

Shakespeare Street near the art college. They were outside chatting to

us waiting for their turn and missed it and had to be hurriedly fitted in

later. In the confusion, I got into the room and Kevin was left outside. I

witnessed Helen start crying when she came to her bit to speak,

remembering what a mistake it had been the first time.
    
The entrance where Kevin was waiting was all covered in highly

coloured faience art nouveau glazed tiles. Helen and Dick were planning

to go to South Afica with her daughter, which upset me a lot. How could

they go and live in a country like that with apartheid? Here their little

girl’s best friend was a nice black boy called Barrington. How were they

going to explain the awful difference in South Africa? Kevin had been

brought up in Rhodesia with black servants and he’d never thought

about all this but now he began to. I photographed him  in the city

posing near all my favourite Victorian buidings and next to my finished

urban grass exhibit in coleege and next to a graffitied wall that said ‘War

is not healthy for children and all living things’
 
Generally we had a lovely time. We left my parents to their aghast old

fashioned attitudes, well Dad anyway, and went back to Nottingham

hand in hand.

   
   It suited me to be settled and I was able to work. Kevin took an 

interest in my art and in art in general and in music and in being part of

the scene. He got work as a taxi driver. One night he told me he took a

customer round to a brothel and the young woman called out that she’d

take the driver for free. Kevin was cheerful, brown, lively and got on well

with everyone.
   
That summer we’d bought a van to go to the Isle of Wight pop festival

again and then on to Cornwall. My father was now tolerating the

regrettable situation, which in his eyes was even worse as Kevin wasn’t

even studying at the University but was just a working man like himself.

Dad thought Kevin wasn’t too bad one day, he told me much later, when

he helped Dad move a couple of rhododendron bushes in the garden.

Dad could see Kevin was devoted to me, but he was disappointed and

he was now again aghast that we were taking off tfor the summer, Kevin

outrageously giving up work for the entire summer.
   
Just before we went off in the A55, I found I’d won a prize. As we

hadn’t enough money I’d taken to doing competitions. One was called

‘A New Start In Life’, you could win £1000, then a year’s wages. I

answered the questions candidly and wrote a slogan about needing to

be brave to have a successful relationship.
 
 A man came round to interview me, I was short listed. Unfortunately, 

having entered at least two dozen competitions, I couldn’t remember

what I’d written. I tried to see what he had on his clipboard but he

wouldn’t let me see. My replies therefore were not very satisfactory and

I didn’t win first prize. Instead I was informed I would get a colour

television set. In the rules it said we couldn’t have the money instead but

I wrote off and said we didn’t even have a black and white set, we were

poor students and could we have the cash? They relented and were to

send a cheque for £350, but we had to set off without it or we’d miss the

festival.
    
   Police frequently stopped us in our van, two hippies with a dog. It was

a time of lots of police stop and searches. Once at a party twentyfive

police arrived, tipped off to look for hard drugs. The guests were all lined

up to be searched, men in one room, women in another. Even the ashes

were taken from the hearth and the host had to go to ask for the dustpan

back the next day.at the police station. The police dog ran around with

someone’s underwear in its mouth. There were no hard drugs there and

a couple of people who had a small quantity of dope were able to thow it

out of the toilet window so no one was even prosecuted.. One guest had

known to demand a search warrant which held the police up for a few

moments at the start.

  Anyway we set off and caught the ferry over from Portsmouth. As we

had a van we gave other people lifts.
   
A whole boat load of police went over to keep things in order and waved

cheerily to us all. At night the people who hadn’t paid to go in were all on

the hill opposoiite so they could see as well as hear everything and they

lit matches so thousands of tiny flames were appearing and

disappearing in the dark.
   
 Bercause of inhaling something I fell asleep and woke up to find

everyone roaring approval and Bob Dylan just giving his last song, “Lay

Lady Lay’ I’d missed it all and he was off, circling in a helicopter.
 
The dog went a bit funny at one point, shivery and strange as if he’d

been affected  by some narcotic. But he was o.k. after a while.  The

competition cheque could not be picked up without returning to

Nottingham but we decided to carry on to Cornwall, live in the van and

seek work.
   
Back in Portsmouth Kevin disppeared round a corner and came back

with my name tattoed on his arm. What a mad thing to do and it hurt,

what a sign of committment. Once later after a row he tried to cut it off

but it survived intact. MARY.

Life Class 1967 Chapter Seven First being loved.

 



 Chapter Eight   First being loved.

   Everyone was going away for the summer, so, although we were

keeping the same flat, I wrote off to Brighton art college and asked them

to put up a card asking for a place to stay, and set off with one small bag

of clothes for six weeks at an address in the Ditchling Road where two

other strangers were also staying. I went to a nightclub, met a merchant

seaman in the hot dark pulsating disco and had a rash uncomfortable

one night stand as it was termed. He left me his betting slip which I

cashed in as he had won. For the first time I encountered the bleak

atmosphere of a betting shop, all men intent on watching the screens,

cigarette butts all over the floor, despair and hope like a fog of wasted

frozen dismal life. I’d be more careful now, not get into situations where

sex was expected and then it was over and it wasn’t much fun.

   I took a job as a cleaner. On arrival at the house on the first day I was

asked to iron and to peel potatoes. Both of these things I had never

done. I made a stab at it. The house was on three floors and the

vacuum cleaner was heavy. I was only seven stone and fragile looking

even in a workish dress. The son of the house was home and he

offered to carry the Vacuum cleaner up and down each floor for me. I

didn’t think to stop him. That was Saturday.
    
    The next cleaning day was Tuesday and I arrived early, eight o’clock

start. The woman opened the door and looked perturbed, hadn’t I got

her letter? She was very sorry, she couldn’t continue to employ me. I

was unsuitable, I didn’t even look as if I could scrub floors.
   
  I walked away. By the end of the road I was skipping and singing a little

song to myself about how I didn’t look like a scrubber. I wasn’t sorry. It

was a nice day and I made for the beach although I had nothing with

me, no money, no swimming things and it was far too early for the

beach, there was no one there.
   
 I took off my lime green suede sandals and paddled at the edge of the

sea despite the pebbles, humming to myself, scanning the glittering

horizon. Free of work, the horizon was one of infinite possibility,

immensity, like the Courbet painting in the National Gallery. Tomorrow 

would do for looking for another job.

    In the distance there was one person, with a dog, a youth in jeans

and a pinky-red jumper, The dog was a puppy, playfully jumping about.
 
 How did we get to speak to one another?
 
 I can’t remember. I must have walked within earshot, he must have

spoken, maybe he asked the time.
 
How did I get to sit down next to him? And then he moved the dog from

between us to his other side, shared his towel because the pebbles

were uncomfortable, fetched me tea and sausage rolls with his last

luncheon vouchers, leaving me to hold onto the dog by his short lead so

I couldn’t leave.
   
The day passed and we were talking for a long time. He had been born

in Rhodesia, he had blue eyes, a sort of deep sea blue, not the pale

kind. He had not been a student, he was two years younger than me,

his hair was blonde and quite long. He was unhurried, undemanding and

listening and serious and smiling in a lovely way. And then he was

balancing one pebble on my knee as I lay still and then another and one

more and all down each leg so I wouldn’t move in case they fell off. He

made no move to touch me, asked for nothing and waited like someone

encountering a small deer in a wood, motionless, both waiting and 

listening to see if trust would allow getting a little nearer.
 
It got later: we were hungry. I suggested going back to where I was

staying to get something to eat. I had eggs and bread. There were two

other people there, it was quite safe, I wouldn’t let him stay and he didn’t

suggest it.
   
   And all the time we were talking and it was getting more interesting

and exciting and light and sweet and something not to lose but to

consider and I liked his blue eyes, his smile.
 
 I couldn’t think, I needed to go and talk to myself, to see myself in the

bathroom mirror, to slow down, not to become someone who slept with

anyone, not like the last one, who had been a mistake. I went into the

loo and looked at myself in the mirror and saw that I had already

decided and came back with this clearly seen. He would be staying and

he knew I had decided in the toilet and he was very pleased.
    
       Kevin was so very cautious and gentle and then excited and so

happy and he opened the window and got out on the roof naked and

walked along balancing on the ridge of the roof, and made tea, and said

he loved me. I was not used to hearing this, what was love and how

could he know? He knew and had none of the studenty intellectual

reservations. He was in fact in need of love as well, but he knew what

ell, but he knew what love was in a way I had never known and he 

was unafraid, he had nothing to lose and he saw me as a lovely possibility, 

a future different from his past, a sweet lovely girl with no guile and no, 

no anything that could spoil her, like the blue fairy, like his old love but new

 and better and here and not lost or broken and he relaxed for a moment on a

mattress on the floor, with his dog in the corner and his girl by his side

and we slept and we woke up together as if we were married as far as

he thought, just for the summer I thought, its just for the summer,

even if the love-making made me cry and feel something in a new way

and both of us with our eyes open.
     
The puppy got out somehow and was lost.
 
 I stayed home in case he returned and Kevin went to search. He

searched all day until he could not walk any further and came home and

we waited and waited and left the door open, but how could a puppy find

again a place he had only been to once?

    At last we lay down, still hoping, sharing the sadness and the longing

until we dozed off.
   
Suddenly there was a scrabbling on the stairs. Unbelievably Butch

staggered in and fell over into an immediate sleep, his eyes darting

behind the pale fur, his little paws still moving, searching and searching. 

   It was a marvellouslly happy moment.

 Kevin had been staying with a man he met on the beach who was a

social worker who probably hoped to seduce him but wasn’t pushy. We

went to get his things, a small bag, I waited outside.
 
 I got a job at the cinema, watching ‘Where Eagles Dare’ every evening.

Some of the usherettes had seen it two hundred times as it was on for

the season. They knew all the continuity mistakes. I had to fetch and

carry down a very heavy tray of ice creams, down five flights of stairs,

and get the change right in the dark or it was deducted from my meagre

wages. On the day off we were given free tickets for the other cinema.
 
 Kevin came into the bar in the interval every night and met me out, until

he got a job as a double - glazing installer, coming home with cuts on his

fingers and powdered glass in his hair. He went off to do a job in

Nottingham one weekend and phoned the police when he couldn’t get

home and they came into the cinema to tell me he was o.k.
 
 A few days after we met Kevin was ill. It was like pissing razor blades.

He knew what it was because he’d had it before. He wasn’t angry, he

took us off to the clinic for pills, a week’s abstinence and we were cured

of gonorrhea, another present from the merchant seaman.
 
 Unexpectedly my parents called in, passing on their holiday. So they 

met Kevin and afterwards said they had thought there was more to it

than that he was another person staying in the house. It was something

about the way he looked as he leant out of the window waving goodbye

next to me.
   
One day we rowed about something and I walked off the beach, but

loitered on the first corner so much hoping Kevin would follow. A young

woman started to talk to me, suggesting that we pick up two men for

money, or maybe we could do without them and just have fun the two of

us? How did I know I didn’t want to if I’d never tried it? I was so

surprised I couldn’t think what to say. I had a boyfriend. Well, o.k. She

was up for a threesome. At this point Kevin appeared to the rescue and

the woman melted away to try another corner.
 
 We decided to go off to the pop festival on the Isle of Wight.

Kevin played cards after work and won a sleeping bag, so we had one

each although we tried squeezing into one, which was just possible but

it wasn’t possible to make love because it was such a tight fit.
 
 We left the dog with Kevin’s grandfather, who lived in Brighton. We had

to spend a night on the floor in the same room as the old man, who got

up twice in the night and peed loudly into a bucket while we held onto

one another shaking with laughter but repectfully silent.

The music was amazing, Hendrix. The crowds were vast and entirely

peaceful. We slept out on the grass. We smoked a little dope. Kevin

smoked roll ups and kept a piece of orange peel in the tin to make the

first drag taste of it, and he’d offer this to me whilst never trying to get

me to take up smoking, and I didn’t.
 
 I was thinking that now it would be over. I had had a wonderful summer

but I had to go back to Nottingham to University. Kevin however insisted

that he was now with me, we would hitch to Nottingham, he would never

leave me, he loved me. As we set out together,  I began to believe him,

to recognize that I wanted to believe him, that I maybe felt the same but

hardly dared to feel this.

Life Class 1967 Chapter 7 First Student Protest

 

Chapter seven   First student protest.

  The other compulsory trip abroad to complete this twentieth century

 version of the Grand Tour for we who had learnt a smattering of Italian

for two years was a whistlestop dash from Florence to Sienna, Assisi,

Padua, Rome and Venice, all the images and artists left jumbled in the

mind like a quick fire slide show.

  In Italy it was cheaper to eat standing up than sitting down just when

you needed a rest. We couldn’t afford a gondola, anyway there was no

romance except the Swiss girl went out with a soldier who wore one of

those feathered helmets. In Rome we walked single file down a street as

a passing male drove slowly by, playing with his penis, so that each of

us turned round to check with the student behind if we’d really seen this.

  It was impossible to walk about in Italy as an 18 or 19 year old woman

 without a constant what would later be called harrassment. No, we were

not Americanos, no, we would not go dancing, no. I turned on a group of 

boys so savagely that they dropped back a little stunned by my anger. It

was far more constant a nuisance than at home. We were evidently not

Italian and therefore were assumed to be much more available.
 
As it was Easter many of the sacred works of art were covered up by

lenten purple cloths. We also missed Leonardo’s last supper and the

Borghese  gallery in Rome was closed.
 
   I prefered the pre-Renaissence works. The Michelangelo David was

too big and fleshy, too Derek. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, which

Professor Smart had had projected on the very low lecture room ceiling

for weeks on end, where it was reduced to about two feet long, was a

bore. I tried to lie on the floor to study it and was at once ordered to get

up by the invigilating guards. I said to Bryony there should be a

trampoline and we could bounce up and scrape bits off until the

wretched thing was destroyed.
 
The tutors were distressed that the stuudents seemed to have given up

the practice of sketching. The University staff didn’t mix with the art

college tutors and the politics of running a course between the two

institutions was becoming awkward. The art college had opened a new

building with a white brick interior. Margaret Thatcher, education

minister, came to open it and was greeted by shouts of ‘Margaret 

Thatcher, milk Snatcher’ as she’d stopped the school milk provision that

had made us grow taller than the previous generation. In the old council

flats opposite the tenants hung out a banner ‘They’ve tarted up the

outsides [hastily repainted the week before] come and look at the

Insides’. She didn’t. The new building had a new regime of students

having no individual territory, none of the little personal cubicles beloved

of art students and that I was looking forward to. There was instead a

big open plan space with clean, new metal tables and no years of

scrapings of oil paint like there’d been in the old place and that had so

attracted me at my interview.  
   
  In Italy I didn’t take to the Venetian artists either, but I took a trip alone

to Torcello and loved the Byzantine mosaics. I didn’t like shopping for

shoes endlessly like the other four girls and I went off boldly alone to

see the Appian way and the Catacombs. Jane, the Professor’s daughter

was impressed that I knew all the events of holy week from earlier

instruction in Christianity. I hadn’t really been able to believe in it all

since before my confirmation when I was ten when my Mother said that

of course she didn’t believe in the virgin birth. I thought belief had to be

all or nothing but then I couldn’t stop it being chipped away in bits even

though I had loved the stained glass windows of St.Thomas’ Church in 

Derby and the painting of Christ with a lantern, and the evangelical

course on which we all got a little gold key on a red ribbon and Father

Gibbard gave impassioned sermons and there was at least time away

from home to hear of ‘the key to happiness’ and be assured over and

over again that you were loved, [happy,loved and saved] that your

decisions were important, that you were a person apart from your family.

It gave a space for thought and for topics that were never broached at

home.
 
I loved the Giottos in Padua and Assisi. Assisi was so beautiful with the

hills and I decided it would be an excellent place for my honeymoon. I’d

wear the green satin pre - Raphaelite dress and I’d be properly in love. I

was clearing  space where such a thing could happen, to care

passionately, not just for art, but for another person. I was in love with

the idea of it.
 
 I also loved Donatello’s David, so slim and sweet and androgenous,

Botticelli’s Venus and the picture of Spring, the black and white marble

patterns and the spaces and the warmth in Florence, the being

surrounded by people I didn’t know who spoke another language, the

being away from home, a flaneur, observing from the sidelines, the flow

of images, the exhilaration of what art could be, so all around, an urge to 

ving from the sidelines, the flow of images, the exhilaration of what art 

could be, so all around, an urge to go beyond home, 

to be someone completely different, completely away

from the Horrid Uncle, who I could now avoid ever seeing, to be some

one whose home would be wherever I was, who would not be going

home for Christmas, who would not be surrounded by three children like

my Sister, even though holding the first baby Anne had in my own arms

had made a wonderful connection, that could wait.
   
 As one of the BAs had been removed from our course there was a

place vacant on our trip and this was taken up by an art student from the

college who was from Thailand, the one who had proffered the dirty

postcards.
 
    There’s a thing some men fail to realise that women share a lot of

stuff. They are talking, talking all the time, in their shared hotel rooms,

every time they go off to the toilets together, all the time comparing

notes and sharing and learning and thinking. The Thai boy approached

the Swiss girl first, knowing her father was rich, but not that her Dad

wouldn’t pay her the equivalent of the grant that the working class one

got for free. He asked her, behind a sculpture somewhere in Florence if

she could lend him a few quid. She refused. When he approached the

other four, each time cornering them on their own, he didn’t even notice 

 that they were well prepared for his request as they turned him down

determinedly, their resolve strengthened by their nightly comparing if

notes.

In Florence we all went dancing and found on exiting that tv pictures of

us had been transmitted to street level.

Did anyone even take a camera? I didn’t. There is no record of those

glorious days in Italy. Were there any notes taken? Any drawings made?
 
 It feels as if there were none, we were so rushed, so busy laughing and

talking and being that it’s all a blur of shimmering excitements and

carefree one thing after the next without stopping.
 
        There were of course examinations. I was good at them, confident

that I could cope with the strain, whereas the doctor’s daughter suddenly

stood, knocking her chair over, called out something, ran out and was

only allowed to pass on grounds of recurrent migraine. However, she

wasn’t allowed to pass in practical, she was told to leave, and then

there’d be eight. She was one of those women who, sure only of her

unattractiveness and unfashionably large, formed sexual relationships

only with unavailable men who went back to their wives, then she could

say to herself that they’d never been free and that was why they left,

that it was over before it began. There were no classes for self esteem. 

ere were no classes for self esteem.

None of us had heard of eating to make a barrier of fat against the

world. Who knows what had happened to make her thus?

 This all coincided with a new mood in ’68. Students were meeting, there

were demonstrations in Paris and a revolution at Hornsey. Art students

from Hornsey arrived to address us, to politicize us.

     We BA students were an ideal group to target, we mixed with the

years above and below in lectures, we studied in one compact area of

the campus and we were easy to get together. Julian Spalding was an

eloquent speaker and we forced the staff to listen to us. We demanded

to learn about art beyond Europe, beyond America, we wanted a world

view, what was happening now, globally. The staff could see the point

but how could they teach what they had never learnt?
   

    There was no actual sit-in, but there was a sense of taking power. Our

main success was the doctor’s daughter. She was allowed to work over

the holidays, resubmit and return to the course. Solidarity worked and

she was re-admitted. 

We did not even ask for female tutors or for study

of female artists beyond Hepworth and Riley. In fact the woman who

made the surrealist fur surrounded cup, Meret Oppenheim, had been

mentioned, but it was years before I discovered her gender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life Class 1967 Chapter 6 First Trip

 Chapter Six   First trip.


   The tutor in charge of our trip to north Europe thought the best way to

 make us keep up was to run from one tram to the next and not give us

an itinerary and we didn’t think to ask for one. He took the whole trip at a

breakneck pace, probably the third year he’d done it. Once at an 

 exhibition we had some time to look but he hardly bothered to discuss

or instruct beyond occasionally covering labels with his hand and asking

who we thought a painting was done by.

  Van Gogh in Amsterdam was followed by Warhol in Berne, the silver

floating pillows and the Brillo boxes, and Brancusi in Paris. Bryony

and I saw the famous studio through  slightly blurred vision as we’d

shared a bottle of wine in the lunchtime sunshine but at least we didn’t

knock over the endless column. In a museum of Impressionist works

Chris sat looking French while two English tourists talked about him

disparagingly and then he spoke in English to embarass them. He

always made us laugh.

  Some of them sat playing cards on the train and never even saw the

alps. One of the tallest of the young men was ill and I made everyone

laugh by saying ,’its always the big ones that wilt’

   We hardly remembered what country we were in. We refused raw

looking beef, coped with all the changes of currency and bought no

 books to keep our luggage light and were home in Nottingham in no

time.

  Now the course diversified to give a taster of various departments so

 the pre - diploma students could make up their minds where to apply for

 next year, not having our luxury of being safely ensconced for another

 three.

  One of the tasters was photography. We were isued with enormous

twin reflex cameras with square ground glass screens and two inch

negatives and we wandered  around the city to take pictures feeling

important. In the darkroom I found myself next to a technician

developing prints of Derek, the body building model. Life drawing had

now stopped and would not be referred to again. The technician looked

over a female students shoulder at a picture of her lean spindly

boyfriend magically appearing in the dish. ’Call that a man?’ he said

 with contempt, motioning to his muscle bulging Derek.

  Printing was another section, lithography on an offset machine with an

 eight foot wide roller that with the tiniest push rolled beautifullly along

oiled cogs to take up the image from the plate onrto the roller and then

 to the paper. We were warned not to inhale the toluene used for

cleaning as it was halucinogenic.

  I didn’t seem to have the time to take the other hallucinogenic

substances that were around. I took it quite seriously, read about Aldous

 Huxley and decided that unless I could put aside a couple of days and

have a friend to take care of me I wouldn’t take the chance.

 
  The Head of the Royal College of Art came to visit, Peter de Francia,
 
and chose a few students to talk to. I was one of them, but I hadn’t a

 clue how to make any use of this opportunity. I didn’t try to get his

phone number.

 Stuart Brisley came and staged a bizarre ‘happening’. We had to do

some concrete poetry using a word. I chose ‘sticky’ and wrote it in honey

 and flies walked into it and died. I exhibitied in college a warped comb

 I’d left on a radiator and called it ‘metamorphosis’

  We learnt nothing about how to survive as artists, how to make

 contacts in the art world or how to exhibit outside the college.

  It was time to move on from the cramped rooms in Burns Street and

 we found an unfurnished flat on Forest Road, with huge high rooms on

the ground floor and a garden. The shared bathroom was upstairs, very

 chilly and with three dining chairs opposite the bath as if for spectators.

 The gas boiler exploded into life dangerously.

  The question of buying beds came up. Bryony’s boyfriend had told her

mother that single beds only forced people to sleep on top of one

another. My parents looked askance put didn’t protest when I said the

only bed available at the auctions was a three quarter one.

 I painted my room entirely blue except for an orange door and  on the 

other side I cut out an elephant from the green and painted it pink. A

visiting child pointed to it excitedly and I told the parent that they were

 quite correct, there was really an elephant there.

  The landlord dropped in every month without warning for the rent and

to see what we were up to. Bryony had a red haired youth often there

with her. I had a round table top just on the floor so it was 4 inches high.

I had an enormous old sofa also from the auctions, a big mahogany

 wardrobe with mirrored doors for my satin and velvet secondhand

 gowns and a moleskin fur coat, way before anyone made objections

 about being clad in the skin of a dead animal.

  Upstairs the old lady that had lived there for years didn’t mind us. We

didn’t play our music very loud. Occasionally a few fancy dressed folk

 turned up and stayed for hours but there was no real problem. One of
 
these groups was actually the members of a band called ’Principal

 Edward’s Magical Theatre’. We were preferable to the skinheads with

 shaved heads and tattoos, big boots and threatenening behaviour. The

 two subcultures were uneasily side by side, hippy flower children versus

 bother boots.

  One hazard was venereal disease. It turned out that the Milky Bar Kid

 had dumped me because he thought I’d passed on to him crab lice, but

 it was the other way about. I made more than one miserable visit to a

 concrete clinic where one of the young doctors making their intimate

 inspections said,’It looks fine to me.’ Pills were given out to stop non

 specific infections. Examinations always hurt the urethra, a needle like

  a knitting needle was passed up it and afterwards to pee hurt for a

day.

   It was however between the time when syphilis had been incurable

 and the discovery of chalmydia and the start of Aids. It was a brief

window when a cheerful, uncomitted promiscuity could be tried by those

intelligent enough, or maybe just lucky enough, to avoid pregnancy. This

 serial monogamy gave experiences without learning anything about

 love or even about love-making.
 

Chapter 5 First real danger

 Chapter 5 First real danger

Meanwhile, what of the art?

  Everyone at the annexe had to stretch a canvas, three by four feet, 

using those corrugated steel bits you bash in with a hammer to secure a

butt joint. This is a very poor way to make anything and there was no
 
instruction or help provided. I felt a failure as my corrugated bits shot

 across the room or bent pathetically. Somehow the canvas was

 attached and primed.

 A tutor gave each of us at random a tiny snippet from a newspaper. This

 was to inspire a work of art. Mine said ’ summit could be disastrous’. I

wrote it out, it was longer than that, all about ice pitons. I then took

 orange and blue and yellow and green and worked with very diluted oil

paint around the writing so you could still see the shapes but not really

 read it. No one referred me to research other artists who used script,

 and no one called it text. I stood back a lot and waited for a feeling of

rightness and necessity before each mark. The colours reflected those

 used in fashion and interior furnishings at the time. No one came to

 really discuss it. There was no group discussion. Each student coped

 with their own encounters with the staff and were left unaware of how

 they were seen to be doing.

 

 

 Up at the Unviversity chronological progress through the history of art

 continued. Everything was justified with reference to something else.

 Seminar discussions took place, essays were marked with spelling

 mistakes indicated. I wrote about art nouveau and about Duchamp. I

read huge quantities of art history books. Beginners Italian trundled on.

  I attended a demonstration against the Monday Club, a right wing

 organisation that met in a local pub. As the police came in to break up

 the demonstration I saw one bobby thump each protester he passed on

 the stairs in the stomach and I managed to get out of his way.

   Otherwise politics wasn’t a huge concern. Everyone was against the

 US war in Vietnam and against apartheid. I would vote Labour but I

 didn’t join the party. The Swiss girl demonstrated against the

 exploitation of women in a beauty contest and joined the Socialist

 Workers a bit later, but mostly we were absorbed in college life, in going

to see groups play music, in meeting new partners, and, despite warning

 notices at the University that claimed hashish would ruin your genetic

 heritage, trying marijuana. I didn’t smoke and found it hard to inhale.

 We generally, the women, had nicknames for the blokes we fancied.

 Bryony was beginning to resent her steady’s assmptions and took up

 with someone with a double barelled name who couldn’t really be

 bothered to make love, then a man who played water polo and ruined

 her best velvet dress by clutching her with a sweaty hand during

 Engineer’s ball.

  I met The Milky Bar kid, who abandoned me without explanation,

Walter Raleigh, who worshipped me without my reciprocation and The

Persian who only exchanged looks and smiles. I went to Indian evenings  

where only the white people ate the brightly coloured swimming in fat

Indian sweets and a Sikh explained to me that what made a spoon shine

was the alignment of the molecules. Someone fell onto me in the

Playhouse bar and we both fell spectacularly through a door onto the

floor.I was in love at a safe distance with a man with big hands who
 
never spoke to me.I liked the way the room span round after a few

drinks.

  A man from Thailand asked me round and offered to show me dirty

 postcards and I laughed at him and left.

  A south American said he had to stay the night because the police

 would pick him up if he walked home.

  Bryony brought a tutor home who kept his trousers on so as not to be

 unfaithful to his wife, not realising Bryony would tell everyone the next

 day.
 
 I threatened Bryony not to bring home another tutor and Bryony

 told one she wouldn’t ask him in because I didn’t like him.

  A tutor asked me if I was a cork on the ocean and when I said yes said 

what difference could a cork make to an ocean and I said an ocean with

 a cork was different from one without one.
 

 Arthur Brown performed with a candle on his head. The Kinks came.

 People were still dancing, most still drinking, before the time when

everyone sat on the floor stoned or missed even going out because they

 were giggling and sleepy.

  At college we all wore yellow and had a party with yellow food and it

was filmed but no one had a copy afterwards. Everyone’s mouths were

 very red next to the yellow. “Yellow Submarine’ came out and ‘I am
 
curious Yellow’ and ‘Girl on a motorcycle’.

  And now was the time of the visit to the North of Europe to study art

 history, which the BA students took as part of their course. We were

 only able to take £50 cash each because the Wilson government had to

 impose a limit on taking currency out. Bryony’s Dad wrote to the home

 secretary claiming that she needed extra for books and she was able to

 take £100. This came in handy as all Chris’ money was stolen from

 under his bed in the Amsterdam youth hostel.
 
So how was it that I never met up with the others on the train to

Harwich? I failed to get up and look for them, then I failed to get off at

the station because I thought it had a slightly different name, and then  

the train was going back the wrong way. I got off at the next stop and

found there was no train to take me to Harwich in time for the boat. I had

to phone my Dad and wait in the signal box.
 
My Father arrived as soon as he could and drove as fast as he dare but

we arrived to see the ferry departing, only yards from the quayside.
 
Dad took me to a workmens’ cafe, carrying my little blue case, both

becoming aware that they were a middle-aged man and a young girl

only old enough to be his daughter but neither of us said anything.
 
 I caught the next ferry in the morning and arrived with only the address

of the first destination from which our group would be leaving in one

day’s time. If I didn’t arrive there were no mobile phones, I had only a

few hours to catch up with them.
 
The ferry was almost enjoyable. I succeeded in catching the night train

to Amsterdam. I was going to be fine.
 
 A young black man asked me in good English where I was going and

kindly offered me a lift to the hostel, and I accepted because I did not

want him to think I was racist.
 
 He drove out beyond the station quite a way into the suburbs and said

he just wanted to stop at his flat to pick up his post and then he’d take

me to the hostel and to come in.

    I went in and he said to sit down and why not have a coffee first?

Something finally kicked in below the not wanting to appear to be racist.

I refused coffee and demanded he take me to the hostel at once. He

said no one knew I was coming, they weren’t expecting me now. I

had my hand on the door handle and he was saying I had no idea where

I was, it was dark, no one would help me and I must sit down. I said I

would leave at once. He looked at me considering, he turned over the

situation. He agreed to take me now, I was being so silly, he meant no

harm. I almost thought he was right and I was being silly, he had not

touched me, but I stuck to it that I had to go at once, and he dropped me

at the hostel.
   
It was right next door to the station.
   
I staggered upstairs and into a room with my little suitcase and called

out,’Bryony, I’m here, its Mary’ and a voice replied, ‘We’re all men in

here darling’ and a room full of men laughed and I went up to the next

floor and found Bryony at last and a bed, I was shocked, upset, but

alive, unmolested, slept, and surprised the others by being there for

breakfast, which was oddly ham and cheese slices.
   
I never told my parents about this.

Chapter 4 First Sex

 First Sex Chapter 4

 The BA course was a most unusual one in combining the efforts of

 two separate institutions.

  Up at the University it was all history, influences, who saw what where,

which period came before which, all sitting in darkened rooms looking at

slides that clattered round a carousel projector. Next to the art history
 
library, separate from any other library and at one end of the student

 union lounges was an art gallery with changing exhibitions. Each of

these began with a private view held at tea time, before anyone had

eaten, where inexhaustible supplies of sherry were served free in

enormous schooners. One of the girls managed fifteen one Friday

before collapsing into a taxi someone called for her. Everything was very

 polite, the staff did not fraternize with the students beyond a few

nervous remarks and everyone knew their place.

   Down in town at the art college it was precisely the reverse. The

almost exclusively male staff came up from London each week and

mostly sought a friendly student bed whenever they could. Something

cautious kept me from this but others were less careful and a couple of

abortions resulted. Parties included staff and students alike and

everyone might be found down at Yates Wine Lodge sampling five kinds

of port and listening to the trio of ancient musicians upstairs under the

twinkly chandeliers in faded splendour while the hoi poloi stood on

sawdust and milled about below.

   The University demanded attendance, punctuality and work to

 deadlines, whilst at the art college students could drop in now and

again but were called to account at termly crits where ten tutors

 surrounded one student and apparrently thought reducing them to tears

about their general shortcomings was a good basis for learning.

   In the second week at university I met George, an electrical engineer

 who fancied himself a fine dresser and stylish dancer to soul music.

 He had no interest in or respect for art but he took a fancy to me and

set out to win me over with steak and beaujolais in a bistro on

wednesdays and outings on his velocette motorcycle to motorcycle

 races at weekends. My Dad had had a motorcycle and a more or less

 total indifference to art, and I hadn’t read Freud.

  I was absolutely amazed at how ardent George was in trying to seduce

me. Could he really think I might succomb in the tunnel between two

 buildings on campus or down an alleyway in town standing up? Or on

 the grass outside his hall of residence? He was it seemed ever ready
 
and so keen, like a puppy wanting a walk. He couldn’t believe I’d never

 done any of this before, the touching and groping, it was only a matter

 of time, a few more meals, dancing, a discreet return to his tiny room

 and narrow bed, he’d take care, he’d use the withdrawal method, I’d be

 o.k. He knew what he was doing and he wanted so very much to do it

so how could I not?

  One afternoon I gave way. George, triumphant but hampered by his

 own caution, withdrew almost at once, leaving us both as

 unsatisfactorily on edge as could possibly be.

  I took myself off to a local doctor to request the pill. The first refused, in

 fact the receptionist refused for him by telling me he was a Roman

 Catholic. The second told me to go away and think about it and when I

 returned the next day wrote a precription. I took them every day, but

 George never quite trusted me and always withdrew so I always

seemed to be insatiably wanting more.

  We got into certain habits, Wednesdays a steak house, Sundays if it

 wasn’t raining roaring off on the motorbike. It remained a relationship

 totally separate from my artistic life but was consuming emotionally.

 Even so I was afraid when he gave me a box containing jewelry,

 relieved it was a brooch not a ring. When I bought a new satin dress in

chocolate brown he said I looked like an usherette. He never saw my

drawings, never heard me sing, never discussed the future.
.
   One day I was on a bus and he got on with another girl. My heart was

 pounding with misery at once but he left the girl to come over and say

 he could explain. He told me the girl pracrically forced herself on him to

 go into town. His masterstroke was that she was a Roman Catholic and

 therefore would not have sex anyway. I tried to believe this. She had

 very red lipstick and black eye liner and a big nose. She was like the

 Cretan woman in the Knossos frescoe known to art hitorians as ‘the gay

 Parisenne’. Bryony said in my place she’d have been sorry she’d slept

 with George. Her boyfriend at home was faithful and true, got on well

with her parents and she missed him aa lot, at first anyway.

  I was trying to forgive George when a letter arrived, he did not love me

 any more, we were finished. Through my tears I felt mostly glad of the

  ‘anymore’ as he’d never said he loved me at all. I knew he wasn’t ‘the

 one’, he was an experience, unsuitably mod rather than rocker. He took

 me ten pin bowling to try to make sure I wouldn’t embarass him when

 we went with his mates, but I did.I couldn’t aim straight and I didn’t want

to learn. I danced more fluidly and oddly than his precise routines

allowed for. I didn’t like beer, I was going off at Easter to study art in

 Europe with my year group, and we had nothing to talk about. The

relationship as well as the sex was always unsatisfactory and

 interrupted. He didn’t want a hippy chick who liked Dylan, wore

secondhand silk floaty things and velvet trousers and a bell round her

 neck, ten colours round her eyes and twenty tiny plaits flying. He’d

 never heard of any artists except Picasso and Leonardo and he didn’t

 want to spend time at private views and listen to clever art students with

 money who bought everyone drinks and then entertained them by using

one of those conical wicker chairs to make themselves into a totoise. He

 wanted to roar out to Grantham for a thrill, have coffee at a service

 station and then roar back. He wanted somene who wasn’t me and I’d

 begun to see he wasn’t that beautiful, his cashmere overcoat was

 ridicuously conventional, he’d never heard of Rimbaud and

 Baudelaire, and he didn’t like French films with subtitles or sitting in the

 park.

   It was done. I was free again, lighter, more fun, more parties, more

 dancing. Bryony and I had moved into new digs, nearer the University.

 The women of the house, Mrs Grundy, accounted for every cup of tea

 or biscuit and was upset that we didn’t like tinned tomatoes as she’d

bought a big catering tin of them. She didn’t understand that we needed

to revise for first year exams with no interruptions. Callers were not

allowed so young men had to wait at the end of the lane. One day when

 we got back late the husband informed us we would have to leave at

once, it was outrageous that we were untidy and we weren’t welcome

 any more.

    In the morning I went to the police station with Bryony to ask for

 help. They assured us  it was not o.k. to throw us out and gave us a lift

 home in a police car, making the neighbours curious. We were assured

 we could stay the week until the end of term and then we planned to get

a flat together in the city.

   When we came home the next night the husband was cutting logs in

 the garden with an axe. It was scary. Neither he or his wife spoke to us

 for the last week and we stuck together for safety.

   On the last day Bryony’s parents came to collect her, and were given

 a tirade of criticism. I was upset. Bryony was quiet. Her parents just

 listened, nodded, said they knew she could be difficult, and left.

   My parents arrived an hour later. This was when I saw that they were

 for all their apparent indifference not so bad. My Father said they were

 not going to listen to this, they knew their daughter and there was

 nothing wrong with her. We swept out with it clear that they were on my

 side.

  Two weeks later it was up to me to secure a flat as I lived so much

 nearer to Nottingham. I couldn’t find a decent one and in desperation

 took two rooms in a house that had a red light in the hall. I’d have to

 sleep in the kitchen with the gas fire. John Tagg, the quiet man on the

 course, was across the landing.

  Bryony’s parents delivered her with a shudder ’Come away Ruth, lets

 leave her to her squalor’ her father said. My parents were as nice as

 pie. They did not allude to the red light and seemed to have no idea that

it went withthe district. My Dad gave me an extra five pounds as he left.

They probably took a very deep breath but they said nothing except to

wish me well for the new term.

Chapter 3 First advice about men.

 Chapter 3   First Advice

  If you go to a single sex school, you can reach the age of 18 and

hardly exchange ten words with the opposite sex. I came from a home

where there was no discussion of love, of relationships, of sex - there

was simply no reference to these subjects unless they forced

themselves into view.

   During my Saturday forays into town I had met a young man, over six

feet tall, with long curly hair and a strange poetic way of speaking, called

Wolf. He’d talk to me and let me accompany him to a job interview if he

  was made to attend one by the dole office, although he had no

intention of being chosen for a job. He lived in a large, spare bed-sitter,

And he took me to a ‘spade’ party where black men of all ages were

dancing. He actually took no real interest in me. He held court in the

Wimpey Bar as he cut his matches into two, slicing them lengthways

with a knife, which years later I heard was something men did in prison.

A group of us went into a little room provided to listen to records in a  

shop in town and made requests for various long-playing records all

afternoon until we were asked to leave with the complaint that we came

in every week and never bought anything.

   Wolf was no danger to me, he sort of tolerated me. Danger came from

a man who offered me £5 as I waited for my bus, a boy who jumped off

a scooter to demand attention as I walked home from another bus stop,

and a young man my Father thought so polite because he called Dad

‘Sir’ when he drove me home, but somehow I remained unscathed.

   One day I took Wolf and his friend John home for tea. My Dad was

out. We all sat down with my Mother having ham on plates with  a bit of 

lettuce and tinned peaches after. Then we three young people went up

to my room and sat on the floor to listen to Elgar on the dancette record

player. They didn’t even smoke. When my Dad got home he sent Mum

up. She knocked on the door and told me my Dad said we were to come

down at once. ‘What does he think we’re doing? There’s three of us’, I

said, so innocently unaware  that three people might do anything that

one of them’s Father could object to.

   Afterwards my Mother gave me what were her only ever words of

advice on the subject of men. “He’s good-looking dear [she knew it was

Wolf not the chaperone I liked] but don’t get too fond of him will you, he

hasn’t a job or any money’ That was all, no references to her

experience, to examples in the family, no discussion, no questions, one

remark, never forgotten because it stands out in the sea of nothingness.

   With this background I approached Freshers Week with my main

worry would any boy ever ask me out and would I die before I

experienced sex, was I too unattractive to be ever happily settled like

 Bryony? I did not ask myself how to be selective, how to avoid harm,

what qualities I wanted in a man, what precautions to take to suss

someone out. It was as blank a subject as Italian, to be started next

week as a subsidiary to art history.

  The thought of entering the Union Buiding for the first evening, where

all sorts of films and talks and music was going on, and thousands of

young people, over half being men mostly studying five different kinds of

engineering, was a bit daunting.

   I walked in and up the stairs and approached a large room with rock

music blaring out, and as I crossed the threshhold a red-haired boy said,

‘Do you want to dance?’

  Evidently it was as easy as that, as easy as breathing to meet a man,

And later as easy as sitting in the arboretum for five minutes, it was a

problem to fend them off, to develop a sufficiently haughty exterior, an

unconnecting, uncomprehending distance, a sharp retort, but I could

start on that tomorrow.

  I left that first evening with another kiss and a promise to go out but still

not an inkling that I was attractive, my long brown hair, green eyes, my

liveliness, my youth, no one had led me to suspect that I was nice -

looking in my whole family. The only attention was from the Uncle I

hated, so some useful warding off scorn had been developed there. My

parents were always nervous lest the children got too big for their boots,

too uppity, too sure of themselves, too obnoxiously self-confident, a sort

of working-class protection against making any sort of fool of yourself, or 

any wild success either.

Singing in competitions got by because it came from a teacher with an

academic purpose. Ballet lessons were not allowed, probably for lack of

money, but money was another taboo subject. What did we talk about?

  There were less communicative families, later I knew a man who had

never had any sort of discussion at home, no you speak and then me

and then you in turns all on the same subject. He did not expect me to

reply or to ask questions. At home yes they had sat around a table to eat

and now and then someone spoke, but it was like a stone thrown in a

pool, everyone watched the ripples intil it was quiet again and the stone

fell to the bottom and no remark was made, no questions, no maybe or if

you, or why.

   On meeting the red-haired boy again I was able to see, just the

passing crowds behind him made this clear, that he wasn’t very good-

looking. His skin was too pink and his eyelashes pale and flickery and

his way of speaking was from another world, from the south. It was

scarcely worth investigating, an instinct as strong as hating something

you’re offered to eat, like suet pastry, drummed in my ears. I took a deep

breath. ‘Its no good, I’m not attracted to you’, a moment of awkwardness

as he turned away and walked off sullenly, and I was free and happy 

again with a thousand possibilities and tomorrow the Art School and the

Art School dance.

  In town the Art School was a beautiful old Victorian buiding with

classical arches and high ceilings. The new recruits, whether the many

pre-diploma students or the ten BA oddities, were in a room up the road

in a dilapidated annexe. We stowed the required kit in our lockers. My

big tin of cow gum was the wrong way up and it leaked, suspending my

pastels  in a disgusting gunk.

  The first term was a simple diet of drawing, a skeleton, a caste of a

male torso, and morning, afternoon and evening one of two male

models, alternating between John the Baptist, long-haired and shivering,

or a compact body buiding muscle twitching to music in nightclubs

specimen of manhood, or a middle aged amply built woman. In the

corner was a Bob Dylan look-a-like with a bush of black hair who didn’t

take up a drawing board but hung about and rarely spoke. We drew,
 
with pencil, ink, paint, charcoal, pastels, torn paper, endlessly.

Eventually I learnt that the nervous young man in the corner was the

tutor, straight from the Royal College of Art for a couple of days and then

back to London.

   At this point Victor Burgin was already making conceptual art, 

photographing a parquet floor and attaching the photo to the part of the

floor it was a photo of. Somehow he’d got this job in the provinces where

in 1967 they still drew from a life model and maybe he didn’t have

anything to say about it. He just let us get on with it.

  After the first session somehow someone knew to not go to the

canteen but to s stylish little cafe called ‘The L-shaped room’. It had low

coffee tables and plastic cups.

Similarly at lunchtime I was swept along with Bryony and the others to

‘The Empire’. It was down a few steps into a hot dark room like Van

Gogh’s night cafe, full of navvies and other workmen. The food was

written up on a board, you asked for it, paid for it, sat down all squashed

around large tables and they called out,’breakfast one extra sausage’

and if it was yours you shouted ‘here’ and it arrived swimming in grease.

I had never been anywhere like it but it was The place to go and also the

Nottingham working class accent was The way to talk.

  Then I was up a bus ride out to the University campus  the other two

days.

 One girl was from Nottingham, the one whose Father was a Doctor, one

had a Father who was a Swiss Gnome, one had a Father who was a

Professor at Edinburgh University, one had a Dad with a successful

haulage business, and there was me, whose Dad was an insurance

collector. So I was the only one who had lived in a house with an outside

toilet and no bathroom but a tin bath kept in the cellar and brought up

once a week to  the kitchen. I was afraid every day in French oral at my

grammar school that this shame would be found out, never considering

that I could lie.

We’d moved the next year and I went to school from one house and

back to another, from terraced to completely detached. From the house

near the Tuckers’ chaotic life within sight and hearing and their pigeons

circling every night, from being the house they came to in emergencies

to shout into the phone as most people didn’t have one, to the never

really meeting neighbours either side of a busy road and all behind

laurel hedges.

  There were four young men on the BA, one older student who mixed

very little, but once pointed out that drawing a woman was not in fact

much like drawing fruit in a bowl, two working class boys from the North,

one charming and amusing with a girlfriend called Plum, the other rough

and rude who hardly worked at all until the end when in a master stroke

he made a full size canvas the size of Gericault’s ‘The Raft of the

Medusa’ and just stenciled this title in the middle, and passed with 

homours on the strength of that one bold gesture. One was quiet with a

Newcastle accent, thoughtful and unusual and he knew a lot, with a

girlfirend who visited most weekends. The last was a bluff folk singer

from Dorset who copied his essay not realising that the tutor would

know. Mr Pickvance let him read the essay in its entirety brefore asking

him why he’d copied it from a book in the library. He left or was made to

leave. And then there were nine.
    
   At the Art School dance, held in town at a nightclub, I found myself in

the queue for coats in front of a slightly older man who asked me what I

did. ‘Very little’ I said, ‘I’m one of the BAs’ This was received with a wry

smile from Steve Willats, who turned out to be another of the tutors.