The first skin test was negative, as required, but the second was positive. I took this to mean that I had failed to make the grade, in some way, and that I wasn’t suitable to be immunised, not ‘good enough’ by some means of reckoning. It wasn’t until 15 yrs later, when consulting a new doctor on another matter, and relating this story as part of my ‘previous’, and he said ‘So you were one of the lucky ones’. When I asked what he meant, he said I was naturally immune!
I couldn’t wait to tell Betty, and she just said, ‘Oh yes. You were immune’. I didn’t pursue it, but I’m sure, at the time, she didn’t understand this, otherwise, why did we still go off to lodge with Dorothy and Alex? Surely, if I was naturally immune, it wasn’t necessary.
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| 219 Pearl Street |
However, we did go and I’m sure it was with an air of ‘better be safe than sorry’. It wasn’t an easy experience for any of us; it was very good of them to put up with us in their little home for three months, and it did provide me with an unbelievable stroke of good fortune, the benefit of which only manifested itself in later years, and continues to do so.
First, I must relate the tale of kindly Alf Beaumont, and how I Let Him Down. Dorothy had a neighbour, Mrs. Beaumont, a widow with a grown-up son, single, living at home. This was Alf. I think his job was electricity inspector,so he was no slouch, and his hobby was sailing his model yacht. With no shortage of parks with boating lakes, thanks to all those long gone water wheels, this was a very popular pastime, then, and Alf’s particular circle used to convene several times a year, for a racing regatta, on Forge Dam, on the Porter, in Whitely Woods.
Like all the other surviving dams, it had lapsed into a life of rowing boats and toy yachts, but the vessels which Alf and his fellow enthusiasts sailed were anything but toys. With hulls a yard or more in length, Bermuda rigs ran to 4 or 5ft tall, gaff rigs sported over a square yard of sail, and all were rigged like the real thing.
There was a regatta coming up, and Alf asked if I would like to come and help sail his yacht in the races. Oh yes! It sounded exciting. Its next month! Its next week! I can’t wait! Its this Sunday! Are you still going? Oh yes! It's tomorrow! I’m going to help Alf sail his yacht tomorrow! I get up on Sunday morning- I’m not going. I didn’t go. No one ever got me to say why. It was because, not until I got up on that Sunday morning, did the thought slam into my head- ‘I’ve got to stand on that boat while it’s sailing! I’ll fall off! It’ll sink! I can’t swim! I’ll be drownded!’ So I let Alf down. He probably had a far better time, without me to worry about. I hope he didn’t think it was personal.
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| Dreaming of Drowning |
Now we come to my stroke of good fortune. Dorothy had a cleaning job, with a couple, up Eccleshall. Ben Pomerance was something in the city, and Fay was an artist. She didn’t need to sell her work, but had been coerced to do so, on occasion, by admiring friends, so she was neither amateur nor professional. Dorothy spoke to Fay, of her nephew who was interested in art, and Fay told her to bring him along, with some of his work.
For a recent birthday, I had been given a junior artist’s oil painting set, to which I had applied myself with gusto. So one day I was held back from school, leaving Tanya, who knew nothing of the arrangement, to face a barrage of questions- ‘Where is your cousin? Is he ill?’ If she had known what was afoot, she would have kicked up a stink, wanting to come, and if she hadn’t been allowed, she would have dropped me in it, at school. So it was decided best to keep her in the dark.
Off I went, one day, with Dorothy, with a roll of drawings and paintings under my arm, to meet a lady. She obviously wasn’t expecting me, that day, because when we got there, she was out. Dorothy went about her work, while I just mooched about the spacious hall, looking at pictures and objets d’art.
I remember a dagger in a display case, with a notice proclaiming it to be a stage prop, used regularly by Sir Henry Irving. There was a particularly striking work- a small, vigorous, brushed ink sketch of a man reaching up with open hands. Imagine laying a thin sheet of glass over this sketch, then striking the glass with two sharp spikes, simultaneously, on the man’s hands. The hands were splashed with blood, as though he had caught the shatter lines of the glass, and his face grimaced with pain. Of course, it may have been easier to shatter the glass first, then to do the sketch to suit the cracks. Whatever the modus operandi, the whole work was then safely encapsulated behind a further, sound sheet of glass, the whole being no more than 12” either way.
Eventually, I had to ask for the loo. I was directed to a clever little cubicle, tucked away under the half landing of the dogleg stair, which rose from the hall, and faced the front door. I was left to it. As I emerged from the loo, the front door was opened, by the Lady, arriving home. She looked at me, obviously puzzled, and asked, with a charming smile-
“Where did you come from?” I answered, sensibly-
“From the toylet”.
“Yes, but, did you come in from the street, or…” At this point, Dorothy appeared, explained, and introduced us. Fay smiled kindly, and said-
"Just give me ten minutes, then perhaps you would show Neil to my studio, and we can have a chat”.
Sure enough, after a while, Dorothy collected me and my roll, conducted me to a closed door on which she knocked. At the call ‘Come in’, she gently propelled me through, and closed it behind me.
I was in a large, airy room, possibly a breakfast room, originally, with French windows overlooking the garden. There were work surfaces and filing cabinets around the walls, almost all the wall space above being covered by paintings, drawings and sketches. There was a disused fireplace, and in the centre of the room, a large desk, or table, littered with books, sketch books, folders of sketches, pots of brushes, pens and pencils, and everywhere the paraphernalia of art. Fay was standing at the table, studying a sheet of sketches.
She explained, indicating the sketches, as she dropped them aside, that she was engaged on a series of paintings on the theme of the Fall of Lucifer. There were to be about a dozen in all, quite large, about 6 by 8ft. After 10 years, she had recently finished the first one. She talked to me as if I were one of her peers. She didn’t talk over my head, neither did she talk down to me. I was aware that she was treating me with respect. She was neither patronising, nor condescending. She was simply talking to a fellow enthusiast, albeit a stranger, about a common interest.
She took me to the dining room, to show me the one, finished canvas. It was dominated by a reptilian figure, sweeping, round from top left to bottom right.
Although the figure was strongly coloured, electric, blue-green back, lime green- lemon underbelly, the top right area was receding landscape, in very deep, strong, brooding colours, giving great distance. The whole composition had a hot, heavy, stifling atmosphere. After some explanation and discussion, we returned to the studio.
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| The Fall of Lucifer |
“That’s enough about me”, said Fay. “Now let us look at what you have brought”. I unrolled my bundle, and there were maybe a couple of dozen items, mostly oils, some watercolour, crayon, and one or two pencil drawings. Instead of just patting me on the head, and telling me what a clever little boy I was, Fay went through the whole bundle, and told me exactly what was wrong with them, or right, in some cases. She analysed every item- choice of subject, composition, perspective, draughtsmanship, colour, handling of media.
I was using oils like watercolour, diluting the pigment to a wash with turps and linseed oil. This was a deliberate move, on my part, as I explained, to make the paint go further. Fay explained this wasn’t on. You can’t paint with oils if you are mean with the paint. Having just looked into the face of Lucifer, I could understand what she was saying. She advised me to shelve the oils for a while, and get some poster paints- cheaper, but ideal for getting used to handling paint with bulk, consistency, body.
“When you feel you have that under control, then try the oils again, but only when you can afford to do it justice.”
Over the space of a couple of hours, I had the equivalent of a 5yr art course-a Master-class. Over the years, I’ve had people ask me if I would give them art lessons, and once or twice, I have succumbed, because it’s an appealing thought, to pass on knowledge, to nurture ability, and there were times when the money was handy, but generally, I have declined. Just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean you are able to teach someone else to do it. Teaching is a separate art in its self. It’s surprising how many people don’t know that, or chose to ignore it. A surprising number of apparently successful artists have teaching jobs at night school, or run art classes, on the side.
But that long ago morning, Fay Pomerance did teach me- a hell of a lot. She taught me not just from the well of her knowledge, but from her enthusiasm, her encouragement, her respect. It was like having concentrated knowledge pumped into an artery, under pressure. All of her teaching, I absorbed. A lot of it, I remember, consciously. Even now, I’ll be working, and I’ll come to a particular stroke, and I look up and murmur ‘I remembered, Fay’
About ten years ago, I had occasion to think about Fay again. On TV news, there was an item about the care of elderly sufferers of Dementia and the like, being concentrated ‘in the community’, and that in practice, this was simply a euphemism for burdening a relative who was neither qualified, nor equipped to give the level of care required, and was simply being used by the system to cover its own inadequacies, and to evade its responsibilities. Then we get a short film clip of a sufferer and her carer, and a voice over introduces Jill Pomerance, caring for her mother, Fay.
So I wrote to the BBC, and told them of Fay, her work, and how I came to meet her. I suggested that here was the material for a wonderful story, the story of Fay and the Fall of Lucifer. I stressed that I was seeking nothing for myself, not involvement or anything. I was just desperately anxious that the last word on Fay Pomerance shouldn’t be ‘dementia’. I told them about Jill, and said she was their best source of information.
After some considerable time, I received a reply from an office in Ireland. That didn’t impress me for a start. I’m not making silly, prejudicial jokes, but why does the BBC, in London, have its mail answered in Ireland? Are we involved in a sliding scale of priorities here?
However, they thanked me for my letter, which had been passed to the appropriate department, (Isle of Mull?) for consideration, but don’t hold your breath because we get an awful lot of suggestions. I bet you do! I’m deeply sorry to say that after all she did for me, and still does, every time I pick up a brush, I could do nothing for Fay.
The other great ‘plus’ I got from my sojourn in Pearl Street was discovering Sharrow Vale Cemetery, just 5 mins. walk away. A private cemetery set up by the Victorians, so that the Great and the Good could, by paying great and good money, be buried in select and private company, and not have to rough it with the common corpses up the council bone yard, over the east side of the city. Of course, by the time I saw it, the Sharrow Vale Cemetery Co. had ceased to function, slipped its last customer under the well- manicured sod, cemented the last urn into the wall, cut the crusts off the last ham sandwich, and intoned the last ‘Abide with Me’. Its heaven was fully subscribed, its last train had gone to glory (First Class only, of course) and its portals and books were closed to any further business.
But the public still had freedom of access, and to walk there was to walk back in time. The carriage drive lead to a wide, sweeping turn around a once bosky and blossom filled island, now weed and vine entangled, and overgrown, in front of a Victorian Gothick church, once grand enough to grace any gentry-sponsored, country parish- now derelict. The pigeons had flown in through the roof, the stones had sailed in through the stained glass windows, and the vagrants and vandals had smashed their way in through the locked and barred doors, to hold their drugfests and their feasts, by their bonfires of hymn books and pewsticks.
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| This Vale of Sharrow |
Up the higher end of the site was another chapel- an exact replica of an Egyptian temple. Well, I say an exact replica. The lotus capitals and the papyrus columns were a bit half-arsed, and it was the Greeks who had pediments, pitched roofs and entablatures, not the Egyptians, but the windows are spot on. Not that the Egyptians had windows, not as per your actual such, in fact all the Carters and Caernarvons who ever robbed a tomb only ever came up with one- at Medinet Abu (you remember it- if it weren’t for the vultures and the winged disc on top, you’d swear it was Venetian, not Egyptian) but if the Egyptians had ever gone in for windows, in a Boulton and Paulish way (should that be Pauline?) then these are the windows they would have come up with, without a doubt.
So, fair’s fair, in terms of Victorian Bourgoisie, having got rich by screwing the lower orders (home and abroad- no prejudices among the Victorians) and spending their winnings on monuments to their own vanity and conceit, then it is an exact replica of an Egyptian temple, which was a necessary and worthy backdrop for what followed- Funerary Monumentia, and Statuary. Oh, yes!
Angels, urns naked or semi draped, columns whole, or broken to signify a life cut short, cruelly short even, cataphalques, mausoleums, sarcophagi, tombs and vaults. All bearing noble testimonial to councillor, doctor, church warden, alderman, reverend, bishop, mayor, major, master cutler, engineer, surgeon, philosopher, poet, philanthropist, public benefactor, worshipful master of the lodge, mill owner, brewer, chairman of the board, also Eliza, Maud, Gladys, Hannah, Beatrice, Ada, Leticia, Hermionie, Sibyl, Tabitha, relict of the above, sadly missed. Well done, thou True and Faithful Servant.
The best treasure I never saw, not hearing of it until years later, when a stone mason, John Hanstock, was yarning to me of his apprenticeship. He told me of being taken to seee the grave of the longest lived survivor of the charge of the Light Brigade, one of Lord Cardigan’s Cherrybums. The grave was compulsory viewing for an apprentice, monumental stonemason, because it was adorned with a black basalt replica of a cavalryman’s shako. John claimed to have been sworn to secrecy, as to its whereabouts, being obliged to let it lie safe in the deep, bramble-bound undergrowth, away from the eyes and hands of unprincipled plunderers. It is such a nice story, and I would love it to be proved true (though I never doubted John’s word for one minute, and still don’t) but in fairly recent years, a scheme was got well underway to clear the cemetery, and render it down to open grassland where, as Will’s Caesar’s will has it, ‘…the people might recreate themselves’. I wonder what will, or has become of the statuary? The monuments? An angel will always find a buyer, willing to give her a home. A nubile, short shifted maiden won’t be left in the cold, but a draped urn, an old rugged cross of the potted meat marble variety, a cataphalque? No, I fear there may have already been some very superior hardcore on the building market.