The faces on the wall of the fast-food joint, plundered from car boot sales, plucked from skips, stare down in bewilderment at the restaurant’s comings and goings. No one pays much attention to them: it’s just another designer fad. Yet among these faded portraits of ex-girlfriends and milk-faced children, there is one – informal, suggestive – that stands out: a woman, no longer young but wishful, tender, gleaming.
* * *
Sam puts down his knife. He has run out of time. His hands are shaking. He has to present his piece as part of his final portfolio. In twenty minutes, he has a meeting with his tutor who’ll decide if it’s good enough.
Sam had shown no outstanding talent at school for drawing, but he’d once had a dream in which he was standing outside a gallery. He’d watched as the visitors murmured their appreciation of his work, but a security guard barred him from entering. Sam tried to speak, ‘It’s my exhibition.’ Then, as he looked into the room, each of his paintings dematerialised in slow motion.
He’d brushed aside the significance of the vanishing canvasses – just dream nonsense – and used a small sum of inherited money to enrol on an art programme.
Sam was especially fascinated by Goya and her husband. Fabriabrito, short and stocky, with a warty nose, was the calm centre of the café, while Goya charmed and made everyone feel special. ‘She never forgets who you are,’ the regulars said.
Every morning Goya woke in darkness to bake the exotic pastries the café was known for, before opening up in the morning drizzle. Every morning she stared at her lumpy hands, once soft and delicate, and dreamt of the day she and Fabriabrito would pack their suitcases and return home.
In Sam’s eyes, as he watched Goya moving from table to table, her shoes too tight for her swollen feet, Goya was never the same person. On some days, she seemed stout, on others she had the outline of a slim woman. In a certain light, she appeared pouchy and careworn, yet in conversation, her eyes gleamed, and Sam saw the girl she had been.
Behind the cramped counter of the café the couple worked harmoniously, gliding past each other. Fabriabrito stretches his arms up to reach the shelves, while in counterpoint, Goya bends down and drops out of sight. They reverse roles. When they bump into each other, they pause to speak in their own language before their dance starts again.
Sam sometimes stopped sketching to listen to the voices that animate the café. Among the this and that, there was a rumour that when Goya was disenchanted with Fabriabrito, she roamed the town at night.
‘She’s been spotted with different men. In the Nag’s Head, the Anchor, even the Old Boot.’
‘They say he lacks imagination.’
‘He must be knackered at the end of the day.’
‘She’s feral.’
‘It’s a cultural thing. She’d never leave his side.’
The voices weren’t cruel or malicious. Everyone respected Fabriabrito’s work ethic – ‘He wipes down greasy tables seven days a week’ – but they couldn’t fathom how he put up with Goya’s worldly behaviour. ‘He should put his foot down.’
Sam wasn’t bothered by the rumours and took them with a pinch of salt. What worried him was the problem of finding a sitter for a portrait for his college work. He didn’t know anyone famous or of any high status or standing. And then, while watching Goya at work one morning, he had an idea. When he asked Goya if he could take her photo in order to paint her portrait, her face lit up and she said she had been singled out by the gods.
Goya posed with mischievous expressions, while behind her Fabriabrito charged up the bean hopper, foamed the milk, and took orders. Sam had to take several photos, as Goya was fiercely critical of the results.
‘I look like a potato. Take my right side. My left side is my mother.’
‘There is a ghost squatting in my face. Change the light.’
‘Let me lift my chin higher.’
When she was happy with the photo, she encouraged Sam to do his best. ‘Work your magic. Make me glamorous. I will display my portrait here on the wall for all to see. You will be famous,’ she said, pushing out her chest and laughing. She turned to Fabriabrito and pressed her hands together in prayer.
Each day when Sam came to the café, Goya brimmed with anticipation. ‘Is my painting ready? Tell me it’s ready.’
He spent months going back and forth between photo and canvas, struggling to achieve Goya’s likeness and to capture her glow of joy. Now, with the portrait almost finished, Sam stows the canvas in his backpack and hurries to catch the bus to the college.
* * *
On the college campus that morning, Sam’s tutor opens a window to clear away the whiff of anxiety and failure that skulks in his office. Middle-aged, unshaven, his hands are also trembling. He isn’t thinking about his students. He rummages in the breast pocket of his herringbone coat to make sure he has brought her envelope with him. At least she had the decency to leave him a parting note, he thinks.
He places the envelope on his desk and stares at it. He can guess what she has to say. Their relationship has been going downhill … yak, yak, yak … He hears her whiny, shrill voice. He knows all that. In bed, her feet have been like ice.
His memory of the events of last night is murky. He tries to think back and retrace his steps. Of course, they’d quarrelled. Bilious words were said. But that wasn’t unusual. Then he’d left the flat to get some air and to calm down. Again, nothing out of the ordinary there: the same script. He’d found himself going up a stairway in a cross between a pub and a club. The low lighting created a tawdry film set, one or two lonely characters lost in sad autobiographical thoughts. He ordered a drink and started talking with a crazy woman at the bar. He can’t remember her name – something foreign, but conversation was easy. She was on the heavy side: her chin sagged and there were folds of flesh under her arms, yet she laughed readily and he needed to feel he was wanted.
He pictures a cluster of empty glasses on the bar. He’d become greedy-drunk and put his hand on her thigh. She’d pushed him away, hard. He’d staggered backwards, her strength unnatural. On arriving back home, he’d felt old and soiled. The flat was silent, with just a single wire hanger in the empty wardrobe. She’d cleared out.
He opens the envelope and takes out her note. He is fumbling to find his glasses when there is a knock on the door. It’s that angsty, mature student – paint-happy and over-earnest. Why can’t he be late like the others?
Sam sits down and hands the canvas to his tutor, who tries to focus. If he wasn’t feeling so wretched, he might have acknowledged its energy and passion, but in his state all he sees is a churn of brushstrokes.
‘Who was your sitter for this?’
‘It’s Goya. Mr Fabriabrito’s wife.’ Their names sound ludicrous in the broom cupboard that is his tutor’s room. ‘They own the coffee shop in Stowell Street,’ Sam adds.
The tutor’s gaze returns to the portrait: a cavern of a mouth, fleshy lips, cheeks circles of red, eyes green-gold. The eyes are a nice touch, yet as he looks more closely, he starts to feel queasy. She’s laughing at me, making fun of me. His paranoia mounts, his scrotum retreats. His mouth is dry.
Sam waits for his tutor to say something. ‘It’s not quite finished yet,’ Sam says defensively.
‘There is no structure. The proportions are skewed. Splashes of colour – too much colour. I feel no emotion when I look at this.’ He can’t look Sam in the eye.
‘If you want to pass the course, find a different sitter. Someone with more character. You’ve got time.’
Sam doesn’t answer. As he stands up to leave, he knocks over the coffee cup on the desk. For a second, the tutor wonders if he has been harsh. Sod it, they have to take criticism on the chin, especially if it’s true.
When he is alone, he finds his glasses and opens the envelope. Her handwriting is like a child’s. There is just one blunt line, no embellishments, no opening for him to weave in his side of the story. He crumples the paper into a ball and throws it on the floor.
* * *
Sam steps apprehensively inside the café. There is a quiet sense of expectation. The machines are still. Not a spoon stirs. Everybody turns to look at him. The mother cradles and shushes her baby. Mr. Comb-over manages a weak smile. Fabriabrito gives a thumbs-up sign. The bishop – eyebrows twitching like a grasshopper’s antennae – stands as if to give a sermon. Goya comes bustling forward, dressed to the nines. She escorts Sam to his seat, and then, with a flourish, she unfolds an ornate fabric of silk and linen.
‘First we must place my portrait within this veil from my country. Then Fabriabrito will perform a big reveal like a magician.’ Fabriabrito smiles broadly at the room and reaches up to place his arm around her shoulder. Sam opens his rucksack and stops. Shaking his head slowly, he shows Goya that the rucksack is empty and lets it fall to the floor.
‘My portrait? You said it would be ready today. After the big meeting with your tutor.’
Sam looks down awkwardly, ‘He said it wasn’t any good.’
On the way back from the college, Sam’s mind had been in turmoil. Initially, he’d felt resentment and bitterness and wished his tutor would have a heart attack. The man had looked grey enough for this to be possible. But as he walked on, Sam – as he had done all his life – turned his anger on himself. He knows more than I know. What an idiot he’d been: how easily his mind had tricked him into thinking he might have just a small drop of talent, but it had all been trap. He was just another half-arse producing trash like everyone else.
The canvas on his back increased in weight and the straps were cutting into his bony shoulders. He came to a halt in front of the solid metal hulk of a large skip overflowing with building waste from a hollowed-out Victorian semi. He tugged Goya’s portrait from his rucksack and pushed it down hard among the broken kitchen tiles, bits of pipe, and curled-up strips of lino.
In the café, Goya turned to Fabriabrito and put her head on his shoulder. The small man held and comforted his wife. No one else dared move. Sam put his knuckles into his eyes and groaned. After several minutes, Goya briskly pulled herself away with purpose, stepped back behind the counter and, in a flash of resentment, repeatedly hammered the coffee grains from a metal filter – whack, whack, whack – as Fabriabrito helped Sam to the door.
* * *
Ian writes short stories, several of which have been published in journals and e-zines and have received affirmative reviews.
In a previous life, he was a university lecturer in Linguistics which allowed him to indulge his interest in language.
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