Jenny’s Ghost
Good old Aunt Rosalind let us convert the basement of her house into a studio and Jenny and I set up our easels and started work there.
And when we weren’t working we were criticising the work of others, making distinctions, with all the naivety and insolence of youth, between ‘true art’ and that other ‘thing’ – that hideous ‘thing’ that does not deserve the name of art. We knew it when we saw it and we hated it with a vengeance and if either of us ever produced anything of that ilk then it had to be destroyed and we had a solemn ritual of destruction which involved us dancing bare-footed on the decimated canvas. I was determined to be one of the greats so I had to remain true to my artistic ideals at all costs.
Occasionally we would go to London to some exhibition or other and were scathing in our condemnation. At least, I was scathing. Jenny joined in as best she could despite her shining eyes and her easy laugh.
Then, one dreary day Aunt Rosalind fell ill and entered the hospital from which she would never emerge. I would like to be able to report that I was as dutiful and as caring to my ageing guardian as she had been to me in the years since my parents had died but I’m afraid that just wasn’t the case. I turned her house into the party Mecca of the south coast. While Aunt Rosalind languished in her death bed all manner of riff raff danced around her Queen Anne furniture, rolled joints on her Encyclopaedia Britannica and scoffed at her prized collection of china toads.
A girl called Melissa helped me to call time and get rid of all those dreadful people and then together we cleaned the old place up. By the time things were back to normal there was just Melissa, and me, and a guy called Rob who Melissa said was ‘all right’. He was a friend of hers, she said, a decent sort.