12. Rome, September #2
The next morning, I rose early and dressed in the dark corridor of my apartment so as not to wake my roommate.
The coordinator of my residency, Thea, had helped me find my room near Termini station.
Although the walls were soft with damp and painted in an inexcusably bright lime-green color, I had, at first, fallen in love with the space.
There were two single beds, and a pair of long windows which opened onto a precarious little iron balcony.
I sat there most evenings with a mug of wine, watching the sky change color and the traffic crawl forward over the ancient cobblestones.
But then, at the end of the first week, it transpired that the second bed in the room was to be occupied.
My roommate, Christina, was a plump woman from Poland who had arrived in the city for research purposes.
When I asked her what course, she had replied, without further expansion, divinity studies.
I excused myself from the conversation after that, not wanting to think about my old school, Kingsfold.
She slept early, and guardedly dressed herself in the bathroom.
She wore the kind of footwear that made me wonder if she was training to become a nun.
After blagging the bus down to Largo Argentina, I hurried across the Tiber into Trastevere. Via della Renella was a subdued little street. No shops were open, and the pavement was shaded by green ivy that hung between the buildings like a dense low cloud.
Outside the school, I pressed a worn-looking bell.
A voice answered over the intercom: “ Pronto? ”
Inside, the wooden lift was from a film set, ornate and antiquely charming.
As it staggered to the third floor, I squinted at my reflection in the mirror, trying to imagine my features translated by oil paints.
My jaw was too pronounced, I thought, and my complexion had never been quite right: pale but shadowy, at the same time.
The fact that I had put myself forward for this was starting to seem ridiculously bigheaded.
I had never been told I was beautiful before, let alone that I could model.
But, as my anxiety built, there was also a thrill.
Hadn’t I always waited for the giddy newness of an invitation like this?
I rearranged my Creta tote bag, a signal, I hoped, of my own creative legitimacy.
Then I remembered Mary’s encouraging smile from last night. Her meaningful gaze: Just like this.
The lift opened onto a large hallway. Sunlight poured through the windows on one side.
The portrait school, I’d read last night, was an old atelier, now transformed into three studios, a small gallery, and a lecture theater.
It was overseen by Lawrence Melrose, who came from a long dynasty of eminent portrait artists, a family line which began in the 1500s.
Course fees were chokingly high, so I was surprised that the entrance was understated and dingy.
Countless pairs of boots and plimsolls had been left outside, and I glanced at them, wondering which pair were Mary’s.
Beyond the doorway was an atrium, which led onto a long corridor lit by three hanging globe lights.
On the wall, immediately on the right, was a corkboard, covered in tatty flyers for Italian lessons, classical music concerts to be held in the Terme di Caracalla, fishing huts available in Sicily, art material suppliers, a schloss for hire in Switzerland.
Momentarily enchanted, I grasped at a bunch of flyers and stuffed them into my rucksack.
I decided to keep my shoes on, so it would be easier to leave if I found that I’d made the wrong decision in coming.
The sound of voices led me down the corridor to an airy, semicircular studio filled with light.
As I entered, I swallowed down that silvery and rich back-of-the-throat taste of oil paint, then something drier, more fibrous, what I later came to know was the smell of the unpainted canvases.
I paused by the doorway. Sitting in clusters on the floor, draped over each other, were around twenty students: mainly girls, bar one or two boys.
In their barefoot state, they looked like scruffy urchins, but that was partly because of how thin they all were.
In their shorts and summer dresses, I noticed how their thighs never became fleshy.
They never softened and widened in the feminine way that I despised mine.
Their legs just continued their narrow quest upward and never really became thighs at all.
The would-be models were older. Some wore elegant, wispy clothes—perhaps they were art teachers themselves—but others looked less conventional, as if they were more used to being naked. All of us, I noticed, kept our shoes on.
I strolled over to a plastic chair in the corner, slumping down, feigning nonchalance. Then I saw her: Mary, right over in the far corner.
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, with a gray, tired expression on her face, and earphones plugged into her head.
I stared, willing her to look at me, but she was studying something in her hands.
She was in the same clothes from the night before, and that realization triggered a shiver of envy.
I fantasized about who Vincenzo might be: tall and blond and as entitled-looking as she was.
I imagined him opening the car passenger door for Mary.
Her sliding in, letting him steal a sideways kiss on the mouth.
Watching her now, I wanted to know where she’d stayed, how she’d got to look so ragged. When she glanced at the clock on the wall behind me, I nodded my head to the side, trying to catch her attention. But she looked straight at me, then back down.
My stomach turned to ice. Cold bitch , I thought to myself.
Had she forgotten meeting me? I thought of the strange way her fingers had curled around mine as she introduced herself.
But then, there was also the bar table, crowded with shot glasses, their party that came after.
I tried to smile at the twins instead, who were slouched in chairs at the back of the room.
Cleo was braiding Bea’s hair while she lay in her sister’s lap, her eyes closed in relaxation.
Decca shuffled into the room minutes later wearing a leotard, carrying Frida under one arm and a pair of tiny cat-eye sunglasses to shield her eyes.
Instead of occupying a chair, she lay horizontally on the floor, holding the dog high above her head and kissing it directly on its mouth.
They regretted inviting me. That’s why I was being ignored.
Embarrassed, I studied the portraits propped against the wall instead.
I was impressed at how lifelike and beautiful the faces were, how the artists had rendered the bright sparks of their models’ eyes, the quiet secrecy of their postures.
I’d read about this last night; it was the precise, realist method of portraiture that the Melrose school was famous for.
But they all looked exctly the same, and none of their faces were like mine.
Partly, it was the costumes: The female models wore lacy dresses, haughtily pursing their perfect, rosebud mouths.
No one, I decided, could soften my angles into one of these agreeable, aristocratic faces.
As I was considering this, the classroom door swung open. I turned around, and in marched a man in late middle age. He was handsome but stocky, wearing brown corduroy trousers, plastic blue glasses, and a paint-splattered cream smock. Squashed into his left hand was a Diet Coke can.
“Jesus.” He stopped suddenly. “It looks like The Virgin fucking Suicides in here. What did you all get up to last night?” His jaw tightened.
The room fell quiet. “And who the fuck left the lift door open? I had to walk up all three fucking flights of stairs.” All of this he delivered in a light Scottish burr, an Edinburgh lilt.
I glanced over his tanned, slightly oily skin and his broad shoulders, which were rising and falling from the exertion of his climb.
Lawrence, though Mary had called him Law.
He was the great-grandson of the female founder of the Melrose Academy.
I’d spent my journey here reading an interview with a famous artist he’d taught in London during the early 2000s, a woman who went on to paint a controversial, but adored, portrait of an American president.
His criticism could be stark, apparently, at times even brutally honest. But she was slavishly devoted to him and credited all her successes to his “foundational” teaching.
The current intake studied us nervously, eager to see if his outburst had disturbed us.
All except Mary, who lifted her chin toward a beam of light and shut her eyes.
Lawrence turned to us then. His voice marginally softened. “I get a very bad back, you see. And if I’m injured, I can’t teach, so they can’t paint and you can’t model.” He ran a hand through his floppy brown hair. “Did you find refreshments?”
No one had, but we nodded.