Chapter 3

The model this week was a portly middle aged man. If only he had been booked for the first class, Sera thought, there might never have been the mix up.

Mr Marek gave no indication of having had dealings with Sera elsewhere. St Christopher’s was not mentioned. He was coolly professional once again although he seemed less angry this time.

He stood looking at her easel for some time. Sera could barely swallow. She knew she was making a dog’s breakfast of the fat man. His thigh seemed to be twice the width of his head.

"You’re new to this, aren’t you?" His tone was wryly amused.

"It’s my first life drawing class," she admitted.

"It might have been an idea to seek help before embarking on… this," Mr Marek said.

Sera wanted to sink through the floor.

"May I?" Without waiting for her to respond he reached for the pastel she was holding. It was his custom to guide students’ hands rather than directly take the chalk or pencil himself.

But when his hand closed over Sera’s she felt a jolt and the pastel jerked against the page, smudging the already messy and overworked line.

She glanced back at him, nervous. He was so close to her, the linen of his rolled up sleeve brushing her arm. His forearm was well-muscled, sprinkled with dark hair.

"Can you just show me? It might be easier if you just…" Sera tailed off.

Mr Marek raised his eyebrows but took the pastel. He was directly behind her and she was finding it hard to breathe. What on earth was wrong with her being around this man? He was going to think she was feeble minded if she couldn’t keep a grip of herself.

"Like this." A few quick strokes and magically the portly model was appearing on the paper before them. "Each part of the limb is its own three-dimensional segment, jointed at the hip, knee and ankle. See? So now you can foreshorten the thigh while keeping the proportions of the femur."

He made it look so easy. Sera said so.

His lips twisted. "When you’ve been doing this for as long as I have, the basic structure comes without effort."

"Well, thank you anyway."

There was faint amusement in Mr Marek’s eyes. "It’s what I’m here for." He moved onto the next student and Sera felt the tension drain from her body as he left.

She was exhausted - the first week back at school had plunged them straight back into the syllabus, with a tonne of homework. By Thursday night Sera was more than ready for the weekend.

But there was exhilaration too. She already loved this class. Drawing a live subject always roused adrenalin in Sera, that feeling of trying to capture someone on paper in a limited time. She wasn’t finding limbs as fascinating as faces but it was all great experience.

Once she had got the hang of it better she would try another medium. Barry sketched straight in oils, not even outlining in pencil first, and there was real mastery in his brushstrokes. Winifred, the elderly lady, had a very delicate touch with watercolours. Everyone else used charcoal or pastels, but Sera loved how the single sweep of a brush stroke could define the contours of a body.

Despite her efforts to concentrate, Sera found her eyes moving from the life model to the back and shoulders of Mr Marek. He was powerfully built and she imagined he would have perfect contours under his shirt. At least if his muscular arms were anything to go by.

Concentrate, she told herself sternly. She could hardly start fantasising about someone who was not only her teacher, but had also made it clear he despised her.

There was a five minute break where the model got to stretch out and visit the bathroom if needed. Students tended to use it as an opportunity to chat and comment on one another’s work.

"I’d love to be able to paint like you," Sera told Barry. "You seem to get the lines perfect the first time."

"You’ll get there," Barry said.

"He’s too modest," Jasper interrupted. "It’s gift that you have, Barry my boy. I could spend a hundred years in this class and still make my dreadful botch ups." He looked at Sera’s drawing. "Now that’s not bad at all. All the more so if this is your first class, as I overheard you mention."

Sera had to be honest. "It’s barely my work, after all the help I needed."

She saw Mr Marek’s head turn towards her, overhearing. "It wasn’t quite that bad," he told her. "The shading was competent."

Was this a compliment? Given how hostile he had been, it was very disarming to receive even a glimmer of praise.

Before Sera could wonder about it any more the model returned to take his place, in a different pose for the second hour, and the class continued. Sera tried to apply what Mr Marek had taught her to her second drawing. She found his advice made a real improvement.

Even as she tried to concentrate on her work she was keenly aware of the tall, dark haired figure moving from place to place in the room. He showed a genuine interest in everyone’s work and treated even the more amateur artists with the same respect as the most experienced students.

"Once more unto the Norfolk Arms, dear friends," Jasper announced as the class were packing up their equipment. "You’ll join us, of course?" he asked the art teacher.

"By all means."

Sera was surprised that Mr Marek had accepted. Perhaps something about Jasper’s gallantry made the invitation hard to refuse.

She expected to have to make her own excuses and catch the bus but Jasper managed to coerce her into accepting as well. It was his tone, she thought. It was compelling, if not compelling enough to sway Bob or Winifred who claimed to prefer an early night.

As before, Sera, Elizabeth, Jasper and Barry entered the pub and went to the same table. "You go on ahead, I have to close up," Mr Marek had told them. Jasper had ascertained his choice of drink - a half of lager - so it would be there as soon as he arrived.

The pub was quiet again this week. A guy in a leather jacket was putting coins in the fruit machine and clearly losing. Two large men with moustaches sat on the same bar stools they had done last week, obviously regulars. Sera made a mental note never to add the place to the list, the next time she and Lois went on a bar crawl. It did not look like promising pulling territory.

"A very productive session tonight, don’t you think?" Jasper asked everyone while they waited for Mr Marek to arrive.

"I’m afraid I got the shoulders all wrong," Elizabeth said. "After that it was all downhill." Sera had learnt that she was a horticulturalist by profession and had studied botanical drawing for many years. The life drawing class was a change in direction for her.

"Some weeks it works, some it doesn’t," said Barry. He was a man of few words compared to Jasper. Yet when he did speak his words had a simplicity and substance to them.

Sera found herself biting a nail and then wondering why she was nervous. She knew the reason when her stomach jolted once Mr Marek entered the room.

He nodded to Jasper and thanked him for the beer. Then he turned to Sera. "Should you be in here?" His tone wasn’t rude but it was cool.

Since Sera knew she shouldn’t be in there, she didn’t respond. She chewed her lip.

"Sera is seventeen, and these are licensed premises," Mr Marek told the others who were observing the interaction.

"Are you indeed? I would have put you at at least twenty-one," Jasper said. "Back in my long ago, highly disreputable boyhood I was patronising our local pub from the age of twelve. The landlord had a soft spot for me, of course. I dare say it did me no harm." He launched into a somewhat salacious anecdote about his uncle, a barmaid and his uncle’s irate wife.

Sera realised that Jasper was deliberately steering the conversation away from her to gloss over the issue with her age and felt grateful to him. She was only a couple of months from turning eighteen, after all. She and Lois had been nightclubbing on fake ID for years anyway.

Mr Marek said nothing more and she could tell he was trying to ignore her. But a few times his gaze flicked to her, immediately moving away again if she met his eyes.

"You’re not from the area originally?" Elizabeth asked him.

"No, my parents retired here a few years ago."

"And are they enjoying it?" Elizabeth, like Sera, had lived in the area her whole life.

"They were. My mother died four years ago." Mr Marek said this in a neutral tone but a shutter fell behind his eyes, at least from what Sera could see.

Sensing his discomfort, Elizabeth murmured a polite condolence and the conversation moved on.

The art teacher only stayed for one drink then made his excuses and left. Things felt flat after he had gone, though Jasper tried to nudge conversation.

"He’s an artist, you know. Exhibited. Barry recognised his name."

"What is his name?" Sera was secretly glad to hear Elizabeth ask this since she didn’t like to herself.

"Tarquin Marek. Rather splendid, isn’t it? English mother, Hungarian father. Exhibited at the Royal Academy no less." Barry nodded in agreement, nursing his cider. "The real mystery is what he’s doing in our quiet little backwater, rather than continuing his stellar trajectory in the art world."

Tarquin Marek. Tarquin the Proud was the last King of Rome, Sera remembered. It seemed a suitable name for the art teacher. Artistic and arrogant.

Everyone else left soon afterwards. Sera headed for the bus stop. It was dark but she enjoyed travelling home at night. It was peaceful. The bus stop was well lit and the short walk to her house was along a quiet suburban street. It gave her time to clear her head before having to face the stress and bustle of her family.

"You’re late back."

The comment was made by Sera’s stepmother, Marisa. Her tone wasn’t accusatory as she had long ago given up on trying to argue with Sera about her whereabouts.

Still wearing her immaculate business suit, Marisa was heating up a pan on the stove. She was literally superwoman, Sera thought. She kept the house flawless and raised Sera’s twin half-brothers as well as maintaining a high profile career in accountancy.

There was little love lost between the two of them. Years of failing to understand one another had done their damage. Marisa still couldn’t understand why Sera didn’t want to study business or finance, but rather "throw it all away" doing a degree in Fine Art.

Sera, who thought that doing finance would be throwing it all away, had never managed to convince her stepmother otherwise. These days they were civil to one another but simply very different people. Some days Sera regretted it, most days she didn’t care.

They both adored the twins at least, which gave them some common ground.

"The people from the evening class all go down to the pub afterwards. The Norfolk Arms," Sera said. She wondered how Marisa would have reacted if she had found out about Sera’s brief modelling experience in the first session.

"The Norfolk Arms?" Her father came into the kitchen, carrying a bottle of wine which he put in the fridge. "A bit of a rough spot, isn’t it?"

"It was half empty," Sera told him.

"So what are your fellow students like?" her father asked. His own mother had been an illustrator so he was sympathetic to Sera’s ambitions. But he ran a construction company himself and was a businessman at heart, so also understood Marisa’s view. He generally tried to stay neutral between his wife and daughter, privately regretting that they had little affinity.

"There’s only six of us. A bearded bloke, a nice old lady, another woman about your age," Sera said, indicating Marisa. She was aware that Elizabeth was a good ten years older than Marisa but wasn’t sure how else to describe it. "Middle aged woman" sounded impolite. "Then an elderly gay couple from the theatre. They’re fun."

"And the teacher is helpful?"

"He’s okay." Sera wasn’t sure if she should mention that he had turned out to be the new art teacher at St Christopher’s as well. She decided not to say anything. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about it all.

"As long as it doesn’t distract you from the rest of your subjects," Marisa said. "Your other A-levels are just as important. You need something to fall back on if a career in art doesn’t work out."

Sera mentally rolled her eyes as she set out cutlery and filled a jug with water for the table. "It’s only a couple of hours per week. If I get swamped with assignments I can always skip a class." She had zero intention of skipping a class, but Marisa didn’t need to know that.

Marisa looked appeased. "We do want you to do well." There was genuine concern on her face.

While her stepmother didn’t know the real reason, it was true Sera was facing a major distraction that term. The very man teaching her art.

Mr Marek had got under her skin, that was for sure. That night as she lay in bed she couldn’t stop thinking of him glaring at her, remembering his masculine aroma as he stood so close to her in class, and how his hand had felt touching her skin on the couch.

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