Cathy Kelly - Past Secrets

The class, who’d come from double English where they were re-butchering The Catcher in the Rye for exam revision, nodded wearily.

The most art they got to do these days involved colouring in their exam revision timetables with highlighter pens – generally a lot more fun than the revision itself.

‘Maia is the oldest and most beautiful of the seven stars called the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades,’ Christie continued. ‘The Pleiades are part of the constellation of Taurus, which is ruled over by Venus, for those of you interested in astrology. Maia is around five times larger than our sun.’

It was such a sunny morning that flecks of dust could be seen floating on shafts of light filtering in from the second-floor windows. St Ursula’s was an old building, with decrepit sash windows and huge sills perfect for sitting on between classes and blowing forbidden cigarette smoke out into the netball court below.

‘In art, spring is represented, as you know, by the sense of sensuality and passion,’ Christie went on. ‘Can anyone remember any artists who painted spring in such a way?’

‘Botticelli,’ said Amber Reid.

Christie nodded and wondered again what Amber had been getting up to on Wednesday. The way she’d been dressed and the joy in her step made Christie damn sure that Amber had been on her way to some illicit activity.

‘Yes, Amber, Botticelli is a good example. Remember, girls, artists didn’t have television to give them ideas, or films. They looked at their world for inspiration and got it from nature. Keep that in mind during the exam, they were influenced by their times. By war, poverty, nature, religion. As we discussed in art history last week, religion is important as an influence on artists. Remember the puritanical Dutch schools with their hidden messages.

‘Today’s the pagan festival of Beltane, which is why May is called Bealtaine in Irish, and it’s a celebration of spring, warmer days, blossoming nature and blossoming of people too. Of course, the Church wasn’t too keen on pagan festivals, but they’re part of our history too, so it’s interesting to know about them. You paint, I’m here if you need me.’

The class were silent as they considered painting a fertility goddess. At St Ursula’s in general, sexuality was given a wide berth by the teaching staff. Even in sex education classes, the concept of passion was diluted, with scientific words like ‘zygote’ giving students the impression that it was a miracle the human race had gone on for so long considering how boring procreation sounded.

‘Is it true that Titian only painted women he’d gone to bed with?’ asked Amber suddenly, her eyes glittering.

Christie had a sudden flash of knowledge: a picture of Amber and a dark, moodily dangerous young man came into her mind, entwined on a childhood bed doing grown-up things. Christie knew exactly what Amber had been up to the day before. She blazed with burgeoning sexuality. To embody Maia, Amber just needed to paint a self-portrait.

Christie felt a rush of pity for poor old Faye who probably hadn’t a clue that her teenage daughter had just taken one of the giant steps into womanhood. Having sons was definitely easier than daughters, she thought gladly. Sons were rarely left holding the baby.

‘So I believe,’ said Christie carefully. ‘Paint, Amber,’ she whispered, ‘don’t talk.’

‘I swear Mrs Devlin’d bring in nude life models if she was let,’ groaned Niamh to Amber. Niamh was struggling with art in general and was sorry she hadn’t done home economics instead. How was she going to embody a fertility goddess? Couldn’t they please do a still life instead – a couple of bananas or a nice simple apple?

‘I wish she did bring in nude models,’ said Amber, glaring at Niamh. ‘It’s impossible to learn to draw people properly with their clothes on.’ At least in art college, she’d be able to study line drawing properly with nude models…

But she wasn’t going, was she? She was going to New York with Karl, before the exams, and she had to tell her mother all this, and soon.

‘It’s not as if you haven’t seen a man with no clothes on, Niamh,’ added the girl on the other side of Amber with a wicked grin. ‘You’ve been going out with Jonnie for a year now, don’t tell me he’s kept his boxers on all this time.’

It was Niamh’s turn to grin. ‘He’s worth drawing, all right. And he’s got a bigger you-know-what than all those Michelangelo statues!’

The back of the class dissolved into filthy giggles, but were sure Christie, who was walking sedately around the art room, couldn’t have heard the remark.

Silvery-white hair was a fabulous disguise, Christie thought as she managed not to smile. Schoolgirls appeared to think that white-haired equalled deaf, which meant she overheard all manner of things she mightn’t have heard otherwise. These girls probably would have been stunned to think that their esteemed art teacher had made the same jokes once, a lifetime ago, when she was as young and when men’s heads turned to look at her.

Young people always imagined that sex and passion had been invented by them. Christie fingered the gold and jasper scarab necklace that James had once bought for her in a market in Cairo, and smiled.

When you were over the age of sixty, if you hinted at a moment of wildness in your youth, people smiled benignly and imagined you meant a reckless time when you’d sat in a public bar and drank a pint of Guinness when such a thing was frowned upon. But she’d known plenty of passion. Still did. Being a stalwart of the local church didn’t mean she was dead from the neck down, no matter what the youngsters thought.

That holiday in Cairo had been before the children were born, when she and James had been able to take advantage of a cheap week-long trip. They’d sighed with pleasure over the treasures of the Egyptian Museum by day, and lay in each other’s arms in their shabby hotel by night with the overhead fan not quite doing its job.

Despite that, they’d made love every night, caught up in the sensuality of Cairo with its iconic sights, and the heady perfume of the spice markets.

The heat was an incredible aphrodisiac, James said, on the last night of their holiday, as he lay back against the pillows, sated, and watched his wife standing naked in the moonlight in front of the hotel-room mirror.

‘Just as well we don’t live here all the time, then,’ Christie teased, admiring the necklace that lay between her full, high breasts. ‘I love this,’ she said, holding it tenderly. ‘Thank you.’

‘You do understand that I’ll want to rip your clothes off every time you wear it?’ he asked.

‘Even in the supermarket?’

‘We’d probably have to wait till we got to the car park,’ he amended. ‘Wouldn’t want to bruise the avocados.’

‘How about we introduce a one-hour rule? Once you notice the necklace, we have one hour to get to bed.’

James grinned lazily. ‘Sounds good to me.’

No, she thought now, watching her class concentrating on their drawing boards: young people thought that old age was at best fifteen to twenty years older than they were, and reckoned your life was over once you hit forty. They’d learn one day.

Christie had no teaching in the period before lunch, so she headed for the staff room to mark the art history revision test the fifth years had handed in earlier. St Ursula’s staff room was in the original, 1940s part of the school, surrounded by small classrooms with creaky wooden doors, crumbling parquet floors and thick walls that you couldn’t hammer a nail into. The staff room itself was the biggest room in this section of the building and, in the fifteen years she’d worked in the school, Christie had decided it had a routine about it, an ebb and flow rather like a sea.