The faces on the wall of the fast-food joint have been plundered from car boots and plucked from skips. The freakish representations stare down in bewilderment at the restaurant’s familiar comings and goings. No one pays much attention; it’s another designer fad. Yet among the paintings ( two-dimensional girlfriends, children, and teachers), there is one—lit by wintry sunlight—that stands out: a portrait by a nervous hand—informal, suggestive—of a face at once tender and hurt, and that longs to return home.
Sam puts down his knife. He has run out of time. He has to present this 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’s Dream: Sam stands outside a gallery. Perfumed visitors murmur their appreciation. A security guard bars him from entering, ‘Show me identity.’ Sam tries to speak, ‘It’s my exhibition.’ Then, as he looks into the room, each painting dematerialises.
Sam had no outstanding talent at school for drawing or anything else, yet brushing aside the significance of the vanishing canvasses as just dream nonsense, he used a small sum of inherited money to enrol in an art programme at his run-of-the-mill local college.
Sam spent most days at Goya’s, a small café in the high street. The whistling machines, the scents of coffee and the wet dog became home. He practiced his skills by sketching the café’s regulars: the retired bishop with animated eyebrows; the comb-over ex-librarian whose shoulders drooped; the single mother who giggled manically when her buggy jammed in the doorway. Their blemishes, scars, and lopsided features allowed him a glimpse of another world. It was intoxicating.
He was especially fascinated by Goya and her husband. Fabriabrito, short and stocky with a bulbous, warty nose, was the calm centre of the café, while Goya charmed the customers and made them feel special: ‘She’ll never forget who you are.’
Every morning Goya woke in darkness to bake pastries before opening up the café in the morning drizzle and dreaming of packing her suitcase. Goya’s hands, once soft and delicate, were now lumpy. 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. On some days, she was 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, 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 the dance starts up again.
Sam sometimes stops to listen to the voices that animate the café. One rumour is that when Goya is disenchanted with Fabriabrito’s ‘lack of imagination’, she roams the town at night.
‘She’s been spotted. With different men. In the Nag’s Head, the Anchor, even the Old Boot.’
‘She’s clearly feral.’
‘It’s a cultural thing.’
‘She’d never leave his side.’
Everyone respected Fabriabrito’s work ethic—”He ‘wipes down greasy tables seven days a week,”—but’ they couldn’t fathom why he put up with Goya’s worldly behaviour, ‘He should put his foot down.’
Sam had a passion for Goya and she was affectionate towards him, so he took these views with a pinch of salt. Then Sam asked her if he could take her photo in order to paint her portrait for his college portfolio. Her face lit up. She felt she had been singled out by the gods.
Goya posed with comical and mischievous expressions, while behind her, Fabriabrito charged up the beanhopper, foamed the milk, and took orders. Sam had to take several photos, as Goya was fiercely critical of the results.
‘Why do you make me look like a potato? Take my right side. My left side makes me look like my mother.’
‘Who is that 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 it here 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 it ready? When is it ready? Tell me when it’s ready?’
Now, with the portrait almost finished, Sam stows the canvas in his backpack and hurries to catch the bus to the college. He’s spent months going back and forth between photo and canvas, not just to achieve Goya’s likeness but to capture her joy at feeling so distinguished, ‘having my place in the sun,’ as she said.
In his office on campus that morning, Sam’s tutor opens a window to clear away the whiff of anxiety and failure. Middle-aged, unshaven, his hands are trembling. He isn’t thinking about his students. He rummages in the breast pocket of his herringbone coat to make sure he has brought the envelope with him. At least she had the decency to leave a parting note.
He places the envelope on his desk. He can guess what she has to say. Their relationship had been going downhill… yak, yak, yak… In bed, her feet were like ice, her voice whiny and shrill.
His memory of events was murky, but he knew that since last night everything had changed. They’d quarrelled, which wasn’t unusual. Then he’d left the flat to get some air and to calm down. He found himself going up a stairway in a cross between a pub and a club. The lighting transformed everyone into characters from a tawdry film set. He started talking with the crazy woman at the bar. He couldn’t remember her name – something foreign, but conversation had been easy. He pictured a cluster of empty glasses. She was on the heavy side: her chin sagged and there were folds of flesh under her arms, yet he needed to feel the thrill of seduction. He needed to feel something. When she’d pushed him away, he stumbled backwards. He was surprised at her sheer strength. On arriving back home, he felt soiled. The flat was silent, just a wire hanger in the empty wardrobe.
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 everyone else?
Sam sits down and hands the canvas to his tutor, who tries to focus on the painting. If he wasn’t feeling so wretched, he might have acknowledged its energy and passion, but in his hungover state, all he sees is a churn of brushstrokes.
‘Who was your sitter ?’
‘It’s Goya. Mr Fabriabrito’s wife.’ Their names sound ludicrous. ‘They own the coffee shop in Stowell Street,’ Sam adds nervously.
The tutor’s gaze returns to the portrait. The woman has a black cavern of a mouth and fleshy lips. Her cheeks are circles of red, her eyes green-gold. As he looks more closely, he starts to feel queasy; Is she laughing at me? Is she making fun of me? His scrotum retreats.
‘Are those cat hairs stuck in the paint?’ He winces at the malice in his question.
‘It’s not quite finished yet,’ Sam answers defensively.
‘Look, there is no structure here. The proportions are skewed. These are just splashes of colour—too much colour. To be honest, I feel no emotion when I look at this.’
He can’t look Sam in the eye. He doesn’t want Sam to see his shame.
‘If you want to pass the course, why don’t you at least find a different sitter? Someone with more character. Someone less hum-drum.’
Sam doesn’t answer, but as he stands up to leave, he knocks over the coffee cup on the desk. For a moment, the tutor wonders if he has been too harsh, but quickly dismisses this thought and wipes up the coffee. They have to learn to take it on the chin.
He finds his glasses and stares at the note on his desk. 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, and not a spoon stirs. Everybody turns to look at him. The single mother cradles and shushes her baby. The melancholy ex-librarian manages a weak smile. Fabriabrito gives a thumbs-up sign. The bishop—eyebrows twitching like a grasshopper’s antennae—stands as if about 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 goes to open 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 was no good.’
On the way back from the college, Sam felt resentment and bitterness. The catchy refrain ‘played on repeat in his head like a playground taunt. His painting was just ‘colour and cat hair’. Sam turned his anger on himself. How easily his mind had tricked him into thinking he might have a small drop of talent, a gaze that could separate him from the unseeing and allow him to escape his allotted place in the world. What an idiot. As he walked on, he realised it had all been a hideous trap; his intuition had failed him; ‘he knows more than I know.’
The canvass on his back increased in weight and the straps cut into his bony shoulders. His mind in turmoil, 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 the painting from his rucksack and pushed it down among the broken kitchen tiles, bits of pipe, and curled-up strips of lino, and walked on.
In the café, Goya turned to Fabriabrito and put her head on his shoulder. The small man held and comforted his wife. No one 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 rare 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. He cycles and has written ‘Canal Conversations: Cycling on the Canal Des Deux Mers’ – NOT a guide book! He lives in France.
