Roger Curtis - Lights in a Western Sky

Jessica entered her second year at college with an offer of a shared exhibition in a West End gallery. Alex, with a meeting in town, decided to walk past the windows. Then he retraced his steps and went in. ‘Abstract modern,’ he said, in reply to the salesman’s enquiry. ‘Then you may just be interested in this, Sir.’ ‘And the price?’ ‘Just five thousand guineas. The artist is still relatively unknown but shows great promise.’ That afternoon, with Jessica and Margery both out, he gave special attention to the contents of Jessica’s room.

The light falling from a high window illuminated a grey and hostile interior. To Alex’s surprise the bed had been shifted and cringed, unmade, in a corner of the room. A trestle table in the centre was piled high with artists’ materials. The curtains from the windows lay crumpled underneath, as if they too were destined to be cut and daubed. The familiar easel now rested forlornly against the wall, giving way to an expanse of floor on which lay stretched a broad sheet of hessian encrusted and pustulous with globs of red and ochre flecked with grey. It reminded Alex of a particularly violent traffic accident. He looked for the conventional painted canvasses and eventually found them face down under the bed. No longer in doubt about his daughter’s ability, he still could not see the direction her art was taking. That did not matter though. So long as others could see it, then it was worth going on. Hearing voices in the hall below, he closed the door quietly and crept back up to the attic.

Then, one day, there was a change in the morning ritual. To his surprise he heard Jessica’s voice in the kitchen as he made his way slowly past the now diminishing frames on the stairs. He found Margery tipping cornflakes into her bowl. Jessica was already dressed in her long brown smock and seemed to be in a hurry.

‘Is coffee ready, dear?’ he asked his wife, trying to control his annoyance.

‘There,’ she replied, waving vaguely in the direction of the pot.

He took the milk from the fridge, put some in his coffee, and stood with his back to them while he filled the jug. Then he placed the jug on the table in front of Jessica. ‘Why up so early?’ he asked.

‘I can get a whole hour in before I catch the bus to college,’ she said.

‘So things are going well then?’

‘I should say! I’ve got this fantastic idea for a mural – well, more stucco than painting really – in the college hall.’

‘And what will it represent?’ Alex asked.

‘It’ll be called Penitent Care . You know how the students stand there in order of year. The figures embedded in the wall will show how influences – social pressures, drugs, that sort of thing – are brought to bear upon their sweet and innocent little natures. The figures won’t be recognisable as such, just forms expressing their psychophysical degeneration.’

‘Has the college commissioned such a thing?’

‘No… But it will, when they see the designs. You see…’

‘That’s enough, Jessica,’ Margery interrupted. ‘Your father has work to do and so do I. Tell us over dinner.’

Alex wondered how such a work might be executed, and in the days that followed looked in Jessica’s studio for clues. The floor became covered in wooden boards bearing clay models which he presumed were forerunners of the figures in her mural. As the days passed, the space became more and more cramped. Then there were signs of frustration and anger. One wall was half covered in a spattering of paint which Alex tried to interpret as a ‘work’, before realising that it had had the contents of a can thrown at it. Jessica’s request at breakfast therefore came as no surprise.

‘Things are going so well that I would like to use the spare bedroom,’ she announced.

‘Well, you can’t.’ Margery’s response was unequivocal.

‘But I have to. The college has said I can go ahead.’

‘You should have told us,’ Alex said. ‘That makes a difference.’

‘Don’t encourage her,’ Margery said. ‘It’s all nonsense.’

‘Then just phone the college,’ Jessica replied, getting up and leaving the room.

Margery turned on Alex. ‘Why do you have to egg her on all the time? You’re just an unhealthy influence.’

At Margery’s insistence the move to the spare bedroom took place when she and Alex were away for a weekend, and on condition that all was tidy on their return. That condition had been fulfilled but the pair did not anticipate the extent of the changes. The wall between Jessica’s room and the spare bedroom had been removed to form a single studio. On the floor lay the design for Jessica’s mural. ‘It’s only a tenth the actual size,’ she explained when they returned.

With the construction of fibre-glass moulds and importation into the studio of a miscellany of metal, glass and ceramic fragments, it seemed to Alex that Jessica had at last determined the materials she needed. But there was another aspect of the project that began to concern him. The first intimation came one evening at dinner.

‘I would like to see your monkeys,’ she told Alex, while pouring gravy over her lamb chops.

‘Whatever for?’

‘I’m just… well, I’m a bit into neuropharmacology at the moment, what with my project and all that.’

‘Well, I suppose…’

‘At least it gets her out of the house,’ Margery exclaimed. All that banging and clattering she does up there.’

It surprised Alex that Jessica’s visit to his laboratory was a success. She seemed to captivate his colleagues with her knowledge of drugs and their actions, and impressed them by the time spent with the company librarian. ‘That’s a gem of a daughter you’ve got there,’ one told him afterwards. ‘Following in her father’s footsteps?’ another asked. He went home with a weakened resolve to indulge his daughter no further.

Not long after, Alex began to have doubts. It was signalled by the installation of several CCTV cameras around the walls of the studio, with their terminal behind a screen in the corner – and a lock on the door. On several occasions he caught his daughter on the stairs carrying a large box – or what he presumed was a box – covered completely in black plastic sheeting. Once he was sure he heard a scuffling noise from within, and he thought instinctively of the bottles of worms and snails that he had seen on the table a fortnight before. Yet, if his hunch was right, these were nothing as lowly as worms.

‘I guess you’re wondering what I’ve got in here?’ Jessica challenged.

Afraid to be told the truth, he replied meekly, ‘More materials, I suppose.’

‘Right,’ she answered, grinning broadly.

From then on the door of the studio was always locked. ‘I’ll show it to you when it’s finished,’ Jessica said. ‘Only then will you understand it.’

Alex seldom, if ever, thought about his birthday. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d received a present from his wife or daughter, although each always gave him a card. So when the day came he was delighted to get not just a card – this time a futuristic creation by Jessica, with endearing messages from both of them – but the promise of a cake as well. It seemed out of character for them to have combined their efforts in this way, especially given their usual antipathy. That was a little strange, he thought.

They warned him at breakfast that he was not allowed to see the cake until he returned from work. At the kitchen door he looked back to find them exchanging wild glances, silently choking back laughter. When they saw him they waved him away. ‘We’ve still got to make it,’ Jessica joked.

That evening, turning the corner of the street, Alex saw a number of passers-by gathered on the pavement, staring at the front of the house. He ran towards them, thinking there had been an accident. Then – just as they had done – he stopped in amazement. The cake stood upon the table in the bay window of the living room, like a Bavarian castle embellished by Disney, its faceted surfaces rising up, reflecting the light of the forty-one candles burning brightly around it.