They may not mean to, but they do - 31. Thirty-One

Thanks to Isobel Bonner, it was a football-free week for Keith. On Tuesday evening he and Thomas went over Keith’s talk a couple of times, and on Wednesday he went and got some colour prints made of pictures of the sculpture, but also of Atkinson’s drawings at the Whitworth Art Gallery. He had a run-through again with Thomas afterwards. It was overkill, but Keith wanted to be prepared.

By some miracle, Thomas was able to leave work early on Thursday, so he came to pick Keith up, grab a bite to eat and drive over to the hotel. Isobel had explained, their lunches were in members’ houses, but the monthly evening lecture was always held somewhere larger. The King’s Arms Hotel was a quiet, sedate Victorian building with a modern addition.

The foyer was all patterns, carpet, curtains, and wallpaper, with a rather glossy looking reception desk where a single young woman dealt with a pair of middle-aged guests. Luckily a large sign said Wentworth Ladies Club, and following it to the rear of the building, getting wafts of whatever the kitchen was cooking for supper, Keith and Thomas found themselves in a handsome room seemingly full of middle-aged and elderly women, most of them clutching a glass of wine.

Keith looked desperately around for Isobel, but she found them first and swept them up, leading them to the rear of the room where it was quieter. Keith spied Alison across the room, and she waved at them but was deep in conversation with two elderly women. Isobel introduced them to Sylvia, the woman who ran the evening, who explained running order and took them through to the next room all laid out with chairs. For all the room’s period charm, flock wallpaper and rich velvet curtains, it looked rather more like a lecture room than a drawing room, and nothing like the casual get together Isobel had described.

They were introduced to Charlotte, the lecturer from Leeds College of Art who was giving the main talk about Michael Atkinson in general. She was around Keith’s age and had a rather breathy, eager manner; it turned out that her interest was the British Pop Artists of the 1960s, rather than Atkinson in particular. But she was soon monopolised by a couple of women who, apologetically but determinedly, came to talk to her.

Keith and Thomas moved back to the gathering in the other room, and Sylvia appeared with a glass of wine each of them. The two stood looking at the throng of women, not knowing anyone and with Keith feeling too nervous to chat to people before his talk. Then, of all people, one of the governors from Alison’s school appeared, eyes smiling behind her glasses, at least she’d been friendly and approachable at the governors’ meeting too.

“Good evening, I trust that managed to survive Friday, I’m afraid that our meetings are never very organised, but I like to think we were a friendly bunch.”

“I was quite relieved; I’ve never met a group of school governors before.”

“Well, everyone was impressed with your presentation, so as soon as budgets are fixed”, here she rolled her eyes, “we’re off and we can go back to worrying about more mundane things like drains.” She grinned, but then as if she was aware of Keith’s nerves moved the conversation away from Michael Atkinson and the school. It turned out that she knew Nate and Caroline, so they chatted about the church and its history until the ringing of a bell and Sylvia’s powerful voice asked the ladies to take their seats.

Keith heard enough of Charlotte’s talk to know that he would have to find out more about Michael Atkinson, but nerves meant that he did not pay full attention. Time slowed, then speeded up and suddenly he was stood in front of around 40 well-dressed women. He spotted Alison and the school governor, sitting together at the back, looking at him encouragingly and smiling. He looked down at his notes – ‘Introduce yourself, and why you are here’, and set off.

It was all over so quickly, Keith was sure that he’d spoken too fast, looked at his notes too much, and other things that Thomas had advised he should guard against. But there was applause and questions. Some were quite basic, but one woman rather sharply asked whether it wouldn’t better for it to be looked at by experts (she didn’t say, rather than by a mere electrician but it was implied). Keith reddened a bit and felt defensive, but he repeated what the conservator had told him, there were so few works like this that there were no experts, and Atkinson had used very basic methods, as an electrical model it wasn’t sophisticated at all. And then the conversation moved on, and Sylvia was inviting the ladies to return to the reception in the other room.

The art historian, Charlotte, who had stopped to listen to Keith’s talk came to congratulate him and said that she’d never really thought about the sheer mechanics of the works before. Their chat was cut short because other women were wanting to talk to Charlotte. A couple came to say how much they had enjoyed Keith’s contribution, then Alison appeared and with a ‘Sweetie, that was marvellous’, gave him a kiss. The school governor, whose name was Frances, said that she’d never look down on her son’s obsession with Meccano again, and finally, there was Thomas with a well done, and a hug.

-oOo-oOo-

They’d managed to slip away from the reception without too much problem, having said their thanks and goodbyes to Isobel and to Sylvia. Isobel said she’d be in touch, so Keith wondered what on earth about. To his surprise, Alison and Frances came with them and they ended up at a nearby Chinese restaurant which was blessedly quiet.

At first, they were taken up with ordering and such, but once the waiter had gone Alison looked at Keith, “Thank you for doing that. I know Isobel can be a bit fearsome, but she thinks you are wonderful. And as she is going to pay for the work on the figure, that’s rather nice.”

Keith smiled, he was starting to relax, “It was fun, in a scary sort of way. And there were more people there than I’d realised.”

Frances grinned, “The good ladies of Yorkshire are rather scary en masse aren’t they.”

“I was too nervous to pay attention to Charlotte’s lecture, I’d like to learn more. How did the sculpture end up at the school?”

Alison grinned, “Good question”, she looked up at the restaurant door opening, “and here’s just the person to tell you.”

Then Charlotte appeared on her own. She was short and neat, with a mass of curly hair and something of a snub nose. Her accent was distinctly southern, Keith thought it sounded rather posh, but she was friendly and eager, greeting everyone by name, remembering who they all were. Everything settled, Alison repeated Keith’s question, and Charlotte took up the story.

“Michael Atkinson studied at the Slade in the 1950s, and he was very influenced by two big names in the British Pop Art movement, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, who were both somewhat older than him but had studied at the Slade and were still around.”

“What is Pop Art”, Keith felt he had to ask, to get things clear, “I’ve heard people using the term but am not clear.”

“Good question”, Charlotte gave a small smile, “essentially using images from advertising and popular culture. But in the 1960s, Atkinson visited New York a few times and came across work by a guy called Dan Flavin who was incorporating light into sculptures using neon tubes.”

The others nodded, but Keith felt a bit out of it as he had no idea who the bloke was. Thomas came to his rescue, “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”

“Flavin went on to make sculptures just of neon, to use light on its own, but in his early work, they were part of constructions, made incidentally by Flavin and his wife. So, Atkinson came home to experiment. Some of the early ones were thrown away, and the Mounted Figure series was one of his first to survive.” She laughed, “They are however rather crude.”

Everyone laughed and Keith nodded, “You bet!”

“He made them from bits and pieces he could find, what he wanted was a patron. No-one was interested.” She looked over at Alison, “I think you’d better fill in the gaps about the school.”

“Ok, well basically the Edward Hawkins Academy started out life as a community arts college founded by a local businessman, Edward Hawkins who made a small fortune during the war, reputedly by lots of dodgy dealing, but we won’t go into that.” Everyone laughed nervously and Frances grinned, clearly, this was an in-joke, then Alison continued, “The idea was that it should bring art to local people, taught by artists, in a credible manner. The college had lots of art given to it, some pieces were incorporated into the building and still survive. It is worth asking Therese, our resident history nerd, to give you a tour. Anyway, Atkinson gave the figure to the college, partly because he knew one of the artists involved, and partly we think because he wanted to try to attract interest in these mobile figures.”

She looked over at Charlotte, who continued, “Unusually, Atkinson seems to have had something of an entrepreneurial spirit, probably inherited from his Dad who before the war was a respected businessman. We think Atkinson had ideas of creating a commercial product out of a type of Mounted Figure.”

“Did he manage to?”

Charlotte shook her head, “No, sadly he had a stroke and stopped working as an artist. He started again in the 1980s but doing something completely different, he seems to have lost interest in his early work including the mobile light figures.”

Alison jumped in, “And the college didn’t do much better. There was conflict from day one as to whether it was community, art or college which came first. This was the 1960s after all.” Everyone laughed. “So, there were strikes, lockouts and finally, the Hawkins Charity pulled out, the college closed, and it became an ordinary school. That’s where you come in Thomas”, she looked over at Thomas to Keith’s surprise. What had he to do with it?

“The Hawkins Charity didn’t stop supporting arts in the community, but the money was tight, so they supported individual projects. When Caroline Deeds set up YAFA in 2010, a lot of the money came from Hawkins, and it still does.”

“He must have made a lot of money in the war.”

Frances laughed at Keith’s comment, “Oh he did. We’re a bit worried about where it all came from, but no-one wants to investigate.”

Thomas gave a wry look, “We are not allowed to sully the name of one of the area’s great benefactors!”

Conversation about Atkinson and his work took them to the end of the meal. Keith was curious about Charlotte, but when anyone asked about her background, she managed to bat the more personal aspects away, though she did mention that one of her tutors at college had studied with Atkinson which had piqued her interest in him and in Pop Art.

When the door opened again. Charlotte’s face lit up, as a large guy appeared looking rather flushed. He walked to the table and kissed Charlotte, who looked delighted. He then apologised to her, saying sorry love, it all took far too long. He was introduced as Gary, Charlotte’s boyfriend. A photographer who was having a show in Leeds and they had been starting work hanging it. He looked worn out, despite his flushed cheeks, and Charlotte used the moment as an excuse to leave, which led to the evening breaking up. Though Gary did give them leaflets about the exhibition.

-oOo-oOo-

Friday, Keith seemed to spend playing phone tag, fielding messages and sending them, whilst trying to finish off a couple of jobs. But by the end of the day, he had finalised things with Jonty about photographing the progress of the work on the Michael Atkinson figure, he had had a long, rather tiresome three-way conversation with Stan and Thomas about where to meet on Saturday for their night out, he had thanked Isobel for asking him to speak and had agreed to a date to go to Harpur Castle with Thomas, Nate and Caroline, and Thomas had found time to phone the hotel and book everything.

He’d celebrated by stopping at the M&S Food Hall at Thorpe Park to buy something for tea; mind it was going to be late because Thomas had a meeting. Instead of getting his usual lasagne or pizza, Keith went mad and bought something from a range called ‘Just Cook’ or something. So, when Thomas arrived back, not as late as expected, he looked in on Keith to find him busy struggling with the instructions for a simple, cook at home recipe, ‘We provide the ingredients’. Well, it wasn’t simple, Keith felt. Thomas joined in and whilst the food was OK, the process of getting it cooked had proved full of laughs. At the end of the meal, Thomas had suggested they should cook together more often!

Thomas had a surprise of his own for Keith, he had been thinking of taking up running again and was wondering if Keith would join him on Saturday for a run. Keith’s agreement meant that the next morning found them jogging out from their respective beds to follow a route West along lanes and footpaths which Thomas had researched but, in the end, neither noticed their surroundings much, apart from taking care of speeding vans on the lanes. Thomas had felt he was unfit, his current job was far more sedentary than previous ones, whilst Keith was happy to go along. Both were shocked at how unfit they actually were, Keith particularly was surprised given he was supposedly getting exercise from footy.

At a quiet spot off the road, halfway round, they stopped, both pink and sweating, Keith felt he must look like a drowned rat. After getting their breaths back, Thomas grinned at him and apologised, perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all. With his t-shirt and shorts damp and clinging, Thomas’ clothes didn’t do much to hide his modesty and despite feeling shattered, Keith started to feel rather randy, and they joked about what they were going to do when they got in the shower.

Back at Thomas’ flat, having showered and changed and more, they had breakfast where the coffee and chocolate croissants (a treat Thomas had bought) tasted all the better for their efforts. Keith wanted to explore what other pathways were in the area and certainly wanted to get fitter.