Apologies for the bleary-eyed late-night post but it has been a very
busy day and I cannot wait until the morning to tell you my good news…
The undergraduate degree results were announced this morning…and I have
been awarded a first!! How amazing is that?! I dashed home from the university
to tell Alex, to call my parents and then to call Leonard. Leonard was entirely
over-the-top with his congratulations (as expected) and he has asked me to
visit Elmfield House as soon as possible ‘so that I can congratulate you
properly on your achievement, once you have celebrated with your family of
course!’ During our telephone conversation he asked about my future plans with
an anxious tone of voice which suggested that he has concerns about the future
of our work together, so I reassured him that I am not emigrating to a distant
part of the world and I revealed that I have been accepted on a postgraduate
course studying Greek manuscripts in the Department of Theology and Religion (I
cannot tell him that I will be conducting research into magic in the Gospels and
the character of Jesus the Magician because, as I have mentioned before, he
would no doubt be extremely upset if he discovered that I am revealing his
secrets).
My first class honours degree
has rounded off a marvellous week at Elmfield House. The gloriously sunny
weather has lifted our spirits immensely and the mood in the house has been relaxed
and almost bohemian at times. Leonard has been keen to take advantage of the
long hours of good light and we are producing a substantial amount of good work
(although Alex is not impressed when I arrive home later than usual). I have particularly
enjoyed spending the last few days parading around Elmfield House in a brown floor-length
evening dress with a gold masquerade mask. Leonard's original intention had
been to produce a series of studies of the dress and the mask but he has been so
captivated by the overall look that he has been obsessively sketching and taking
photographs of me wearing the dress at every given opportunity – which reminds
me, I have noticed that Leonard’s obsessive tendencies are getting a lot worse
recently and his compulsive and indecisive nature is starting to interfere with
our work; for instance, he will arrange the pastel sticks in the biscuit tin in
order of size and if Hooter kicks the tin or it is accidentally knocked over then
he will spend several minutes strictly reordering the pieces before we can
continue. He also has an irritating habit of positioning my hair to one side or
placing pieces carefully over my shoulder and then sitting down in his chair,
only to deliberate for a second and then come over and return the hair back to
its original place. This tiresome ritual can go on for a while...
We postponed our work on the brown
dress until later in the week because it was far too warm to wear the dress in
the tropical temperatures that we enjoyed in the early part of this week. Monday
was a lovely sunny day and it was also Leonard’s birthday so we opened all the curtains,
windows and doors in Elmfield House and sunlight streamed in through the
windows, breathing new life into the entire house. Leonard insisted that Luke
and I did not buy him a birthday present as ‘the house is already stacked to
the rafters with clutter on a monumental scale’, but Luke predictably chose to
ignore Leonard’s request and he bought him a bottle of his favourite plum
brandy which Leonard opened and shared with us. I decided to treat Leonard by
bringing my violin along with me and I played his favourite piece - Gluck’s 'Mélodie'
- in the hallway so that it reverberated all around the house. Leonard was
delighted and we spent our entire lunch break trying to record it on his old cassette
deck.
When the sun reached full
strength we moved our chairs into the back garden and Leonard wound an extension
lead out from the house so that we could play music on the back porch. Although
Luke is not normally a fan of Leonard's choice of music and he invariably puts
his earphones in and plays his own music when Leonard starts reeling out the extension
lead, Luke and I have both fallen in love with two pieces on Leonard's 'summer
tape’: Edvard Grieg's 'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen' and Peter Warlock's 'Capriol
Suite'. We can play our music as loud as we like in the garden because Elmfield
House backs onto woods and fields and so we are very rarely disturbed, aside
from the occasional rambler and a beautiful but painfully nervous stray black cat
(Leonard fills a red plastic bowl by the back door with food scraps for this
regular feline intruder and Hooter looks nonplussed when it tiptoes into the
garden to drink from his water bowl).
I enjoy working outside on sunny afternoons, not only because I can't
hear the unnerving creaks and groans that echo around inside the house but also
because Leonard allows me to move freely and completely unrestricted in the garden,
although the way that he sits watching me from a distance with his sketchbook in
hand makes me feel a little like an observed animal in the wild. In order to
entertain myself I have been taking armfuls of books from the shelves in the
workroom and piling them on blankets on the lawn and I have been reading about
all manner of esoteric subjects from Gnosticism and Egyptian mythology to Hermeticism
and herbalism. I am currently reading The Phenomenon of Man by the philosopher Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin and I intend to read John Donne’s Biathantos
at some point in the hope that Luke might give me some private one-to-one lessons
on it! Leonard has recommended that I read the Egyptian Book of the Dead in its entirety, which is a daunting task given
the size of the book, so I have borrowed a copy from him in order to continue
reading it when I am at home (he has several copies and I have noticed that Luke
always has a copy to hand). When I get tired of reading, I sit on the grass and
watch the ants scurry around on the paving. There are several ant nests located
near to the house, but Leonard would sooner let them infest the house than put
down ant-killer powder (a merciful attitude that Luke can never quite understand).
Luke and I have had a number of amiable conversations
this week and – dare I say - I think we have finally overcome the awkwardness that
existed between us. In fact he has been watching me almost as much as Leonard
has, which makes me blush even to think about it. Luke spent the early part of this
week sat in the shade of the yew tree with his notepad and writing poetry, making
sketches of plants and experimenting with automatic writing. It has been pleasant
to see him wearing normal t-shirts and jeans for once and he looks particularly
handsome as the sun has bleached flecks of sandy-blonde highlights into his
hair and his skin is so deeply tanned that it resembles burnished gold. He would
not allow me to read any of his poetry but he did encourage me to try my hand
at drawing on the premise that ‘musical types are usually gifted at other creative
arts’ (I copied one of his concept designs for a tattoo entitled ‘conjunction’
and although he assured me that it was perfectly drawn I knew that he was only
humouring me). Luke is very fond of tattoos and, although his ballet work
forbids him from having visible tattoos, I have spotted a very small, discrete one
on him that is exactly the same as the character on the front of the Omega Course book - I must remember to
ask him about this when we meet again...
It was uncomfortably warm in the garden on Tuesday afternoon and so Luke
and I offered to assist Leonard with tidying up the back room. The black and
white chequered floor tiles in the back room were awfully cold against my bare
feet and I instantly regretted our offer, but Leonard laid out towels for us to
stand on and our efforts were rewarded by some very interesting finds in the
old cupboards. Leonard retrieved a large box from the back of one cupboard that
contained a number of vintage costumes and wigs and several masks from the
Commedia dell'Arte. The masks from the Commedia were fascinating and Leonard
has promised to tell me more about the routines and characters - he calls Luke
and I the ‘Innamorati’, which
is flattering if not a little embarrassing!
Luke made another discovery in the same cupboard that was very
intriguing indeed. It was a red felt box containing fifty funeral cards, or
‘death cards’ as Luke rather grimly called them (Leonard called them ‘postcards
from the parlour’, which I much prefer). Each one was a delicate and fascinating
piece of old ephemera and some were even complete with their small, white
envelopes. Leonard seemed reluctant to discuss the identity of the deceased
and I did not want to pursue the matter in case he had a personal connection
with them, so Luke and I have been speculating wildly about their identities
between ourselves. At first I thought that they were Leonard’s ancestors but,
as Luke pointed out, there is no obvious relation between the surnames. Luke
thinks that they are Leonard’s friends or individuals who have attended portraiture
sessions and for a moment I wondered whether they were the faces that I had seen
in the portraits in the storage room upstairs. But surely not every one of
these portraiture subjects had passed away? That’s quite a terrifying thought
given that Luke and I are Leonard’s current muses! I believe that it is
unlikely that Leonard would stay in contact with each one of his sitters over
such a long period of time, besides some of the deceased are children of only a
few months old.
