In her defense, p.8
In Her Defense, page 8
Before Rome, I’d only visited Europe a handful of times, in my early twenties, taking eerily cheap flights that landed miles away from the city I intended to visit. Growing up, I’d fantasized about the trips abroad that would elevate me into a different, better being. Each city—Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna—was carefully selected as a portal to adventure. But I never got it right. The parties that occurred in my hostels—the only places I could afford to stay in—repelled and embarrassed me, but I would end up joining them anyway, because I was lonely. The next morning, disorientated and hungover, I would flock to recognizable fast-food chains to eat lunches; I would get the timings of the galleries and museums wrong.
Part of the reason my trips abroad were so underwhelming was that I was only ever observing a place, never belonging to it. My residency in Rome, I hoped, would change this. I’d have three months to find my feet there, with a stipend and a room of my own.
Ten days in, the first flush of excitement was already starting to waver. I was struggling with the cost of food; I hadn’t yet learned how to source vegetables and dried goods from the street markets, and so I was up against the city’s bewilderingly expensive supermarkets, those narrow, gray-lit stores where the cost of a can of chickpeas exceeded five euros. The residency would last until Christmas, but I’d begun to worry my savings wouldn’t stretch that far.
I’d spent the early part of that Friday evening searching for employment in the winding streets filled with bars, on the left bank of the Tiber. Unsuccessful and disheartened, I gave up and collapsed into a chair outside the nearest place I could find, exhausted by the rejection and the isolation of feeling poor and hungry in one of Europe’s choicest restaurant districts. The bar, I later found out, was a popular spot in Trastevere, but there was nothing special about its interior: an aluminum bar counter lit by strip bulbs, the walls pasted with faded Lazio football memorabilia. People seemed to like the place out of sheer necessity, because it was cheap and Rome was expensive.
I sat there with a beer, engrossed in my book about two young girls in Naples, when a sudden sound interrupted me: cheering from a crowd of men nearby. I looked up. They had become distracted from the football game they were watching and were now applauding the arrival of a group of girls instead.
I liked how the row of girls reacted to the harassment, morphing into a single file, each managing to raise a middle finger at the hooting men without turning to engage them. When they’d made it through the crowd, they sat down at the empty table next to me.
I stole glances over the pages of my book. One girl was tall and dark blond, the other even taller, and there were two very fair freckled girls, twins, at the further end of the table. Their long, thick hair and their charismatic, well-bred faces belonged in bewitching online profiles, or perhaps short encounters on the Tube—agonizingly brief, always me staring, never receiving the same interest back.
At the bar, I gazed pointedly at the blurred text of my page, then over at them. My body burned with interest.
“Can I take this?” said the blond girl. The prettiest. She gestured to the seat I was resting my feet on. Her voice sounded expensively hoarse, like it had been overused and you were lucky to hear it. Mary.
I swung my feet free, and she draped her jacket on the seat: a stiff, red military piece that looked like an heirloom. She thanked me. Our eyes met. Then she turned back around. The skin on her bare shoulders was tanned, but the surface was scaly and dry, in the way the sea dries on skin. I tried to focus on the pages of my book, but something in my attention had awoken. Also in my skin.
I glanced around at the group: the twins chattered to each other, playing with the pug that the taller girl had brought along with her. When, unprompted, the waiter brought over a tray of shots, they knocked them back without any celebration or theatrical fuss. Not how people drank them at home: tongue out, wedge of lemon at the gums, loud grunts of disgust. When the antipasti was placed in front of them, they picked at the meat and left the bread, lighting and relighting endless cigarettes.
Their conversation flowed noisily and irreverently. I ordered another beer, then a shot for myself, eventually abandoning my book completely to listen as they teased Mary about someone she was texting.
“Not Vincenzo again? You’re obsessed.”
I quickly gathered they were going to a party that night. The conversation moved on to whether Vincenzo would be there, if they were too underdressed, about the quality of cocaine that would be provided.
Intermittently, Mary complained about her mother, counting the number of messages that arrived on her phone, asking if she knew the whereabouts of her father.
“Five,” she said, waving her phone screen. “Six! Fuck me, she’s really on one.”
Eventually, they started gossiping about their classes at school. Because of how they were dressed and the way they spoke, I guessed they were artists. My stomach ached with longing; my peers at Creta spoke almost no English, and I envied this group’s casual intimacy. When I heard one of the twins discussing a model casting that was taking place at their school the following day, and that the work was paid, my spirits lifted. Here, finally, was a route into their conversation. For a moment or two, I deliberated, nervous to make the approach, and then I drained my bottle and stood up.
“Sorry to interrupt you,” I said, leaning forward and raising a hand in greeting. “I just overheard your conversation.” All at once, the girls stopped talking and looked at me. The room slowed, the piazza drained of all noise. The only sound I could hear was my own blood marching in my ears. “Did you say you were looking for…” I paused. The phrase itself seemed ridiculous. “Life models?”
Their gaze flitted over my appearance. Then they exploded with encouragement.
“Oh my God, yes! You must come,” said the girl with the pug.
“Are you English?” one of the twins asked, pulling up a chair. “You don’t have to be.”
“She looks French,” said the other, pouring me wine. “Are you French? You know, we urgently need models like you.”
“Like me?” I replied, half laughing from relief. They beckoned for me to drag my chair closer in, toward their table. “What does that mean?”
“Different!”
“Pale!”
“Young!”
“Last term, for some reason, we only got these really old men to paint,” the taller girl said, tipping ash from her cigarette with disdain.
“Those shriveled old cocks.” Mary shuddered. “I wonder what was worse,” she said, turning to one of the twins. “Painting those cocks, or your face?”
“Everyone failed last term,” one of them explained.
“Our tutor, Law, was furious,” said Mary. I noticed a squarish brown birthmark near her collarbone as she brought a cigarette to her lips. She offered me one, and I took it.
“Not with you,” said the girl with the pug teasingly. “You’re his next big project. He’s obsessed with you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mary said sharply.
“Guys,” said one of the twins, gesturing to me. “Don’t scare her.”
I laughed. It felt good, being the object of their attention. Mary rolled a lighter toward me and smiled again. She introduced herself. “And this is Frida,” she said, pointing to the dog. “Decca’s her owner.”
“I’m Cleo,” said the smaller of the twins. “This is Bea.”
“Are you sure you have the time to sit for us?” Mary asked, taking her lighter back. I inhaled on my cigarette and let my eyes wander over her face for a moment. She had thick eyebrows, a beautiful wide mouth, and that rich-girl skin: poreless and shiny, as though it were lit from the inside.
“It’s paid, isn’t it?” I asked, the cigarette curdling my stomach.
“Of course,” she said. “It’s just, kind of a commitment. Like, fifteen or twenty sittings at least.”
“She’s lying,” said Decca. “Mary needs double that.”
“Only because she’s a perfectionist,” warned Bea.
“I’ve got the time,” I said, not wanting to mention how desperately I needed work. “I’m doing a residency at Creta. It’s not too full-on.”
“What’s Creta?” one of the twins asked.
Her sister smiled broadly at me. “We’re very ignorant.”
“Ceramics, right?” Mary said, glancing down at the cover of my book. “What are you reading?”
“My Brilliant Friend,” we both said simultaneously.
She laughed and I blushed.
Decca tossed her phone down onto the table. “Our lift’s here.” I looked about, wondering who was driving them, whether it might be that guy Vincenzo. “You’ll need to come in tomorrow morning at ten,” she said, turning to me and scooping up her dog. “It’s the Melrose Academy on Via Renella. Look fabulous.”
“Not fabulous,” Mary corrected, putting on her jacket and stuffing her cigarettes into her handbag. She paused and cocked her head at me. “Just like this.”
* * *
The next morning, I rose early and dressed in the dark corridor of my apartment so as not to wake my roommate. The coordinator of my residency, Thea, had helped me find my room near Termini station. Although the walls were soft with damp and painted in an inexcusably bright lime-green color, I had, at first, fallen in love with the space. There were two single beds, and a pair of long windows which opened onto a precarious little iron balcony. I sat there most evenings with a mug of wine, watching the sky change color and the traffic crawl forward over the ancient cobblestones. But then, at the end of the first week, it transpired that the second bed in the room was to be occupied. My roommate, Christina, was a plump woman from Poland who had arrived in the city for research purposes. When I asked her what course, she had replied, without further expansion, divinity studies. I excused myself from the conversation after that, not wanting to think about my old school, Kingsfold. She slept early, and guardedly dressed herself in the bathroom. She wore the kind of footwear that made me wonder if she was training to become a nun.
After blagging the bus down to Largo Argentina, I hurried across the Tiber into Trastevere. Via della Renella was a subdued little street. No shops were open, and the pavement was shaded by green ivy that hung between the buildings like a dense low cloud.
Outside the school, I pressed a worn-looking bell.
A voice answered over the intercom: “Pronto?”
Inside, the wooden lift was from a film set, ornate and antiquely charming. As it staggered to the third floor, I squinted at my reflection in the mirror, trying to imagine my features translated by oil paints. My jaw was too pronounced, I thought, and my complexion had never been quite right: pale but shadowy, at the same time. The fact that I had put myself forward for this was starting to seem ridiculously bigheaded. I had never been told I was beautiful before, let alone that I could model. But, as my anxiety built, there was also a thrill. Hadn’t I always waited for the giddy newness of an invitation like this? I rearranged my Creta tote bag, a signal, I hoped, of my own creative legitimacy. Then I remembered Mary’s encouraging smile from last night. Her meaningful gaze: Just like this.
The lift opened onto a large hallway. Sunlight poured through the windows on one side. The portrait school, I’d read last night, was an old atelier, now transformed into three studios, a small gallery, and a lecture theater. It was overseen by Lawrence Melrose, who came from a long dynasty of eminent portrait artists, a family line which began in the 1500s. Course fees were chokingly high, so I was surprised that the entrance was understated and dingy. Countless pairs of boots and plimsolls had been left outside, and I glanced at them, wondering which pair were Mary’s. Beyond the doorway was an atrium, which led onto a long corridor lit by three hanging globe lights. On the wall, immediately on the right, was a corkboard, covered in tatty flyers for Italian lessons, classical music concerts to be held in the Terme di Caracalla, fishing huts available in Sicily, art material suppliers, a schloss for hire in Switzerland. Momentarily enchanted, I grasped at a bunch of flyers and stuffed them into my rucksack. I decided to keep my shoes on, so it would be easier to leave if I found that I’d made the wrong decision in coming.
The sound of voices led me down the corridor to an airy, semicircular studio filled with light. As I entered, I swallowed down that silvery and rich back-of-the-throat taste of oil paint, then something drier, more fibrous, what I later came to know was the smell of the unpainted canvases. I paused by the doorway. Sitting in clusters on the floor, draped over each other, were around twenty students: mainly girls, bar one or two boys. In their barefoot state, they looked like scruffy urchins, but that was partly because of how thin they all were. In their shorts and summer dresses, I noticed how their thighs never became fleshy. They never softened and widened in the feminine way that I despised mine. Their legs just continued their narrow quest upward and never really became thighs at all.
The would-be models were older. Some wore elegant, wispy clothes—perhaps they were art teachers themselves—but others looked less conventional, as if they were more used to being naked. All of us, I noticed, kept our shoes on.
I strolled over to a plastic chair in the corner, slumping down, feigning nonchalance. Then I saw her: Mary, right over in the far corner.
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, with a gray, tired expression on her face, and earphones plugged into her head. I stared, willing her to look at me, but she was studying something in her hands. She was in the same clothes from the night before, and that realization triggered a shiver of envy. I fantasized about who Vincenzo might be: tall and blond and as entitled-looking as she was. I imagined him opening the car passenger door for Mary. Her sliding in, letting him steal a sideways kiss on the mouth.
Watching her now, I wanted to know where she’d stayed, how she’d got to look so ragged. When she glanced at the clock on the wall behind me, I nodded my head to the side, trying to catch her attention. But she looked straight at me, then back down.
My stomach turned to ice. Cold bitch, I thought to myself. Had she forgotten meeting me? I thought of the strange way her fingers had curled around mine as she introduced herself. But then, there was also the bar table, crowded with shot glasses, their party that came after. I tried to smile at the twins instead, who were slouched in chairs at the back of the room. Cleo was braiding Bea’s hair while she lay in her sister’s lap, her eyes closed in relaxation. Decca shuffled into the room minutes later wearing a leotard, carrying Frida under one arm and a pair of tiny cat-eye sunglasses to shield her eyes. Instead of occupying a chair, she lay horizontally on the floor, holding the dog high above her head and kissing it directly on its mouth.
They regretted inviting me. That’s why I was being ignored. Embarrassed, I studied the portraits propped against the wall instead. I was impressed at how lifelike and beautiful the faces were, how the artists had rendered the bright sparks of their models’ eyes, the quiet secrecy of their postures. I’d read about this last night; it was the precise, realist method of portraiture that the Melrose school was famous for. But they all looked exctly the same, and none of their faces were like mine. Partly, it was the costumes: The female models wore lacy dresses, haughtily pursing their perfect, rosebud mouths. No one, I decided, could soften my angles into one of these agreeable, aristocratic faces.
As I was considering this, the classroom door swung open. I turned around, and in marched a man in late middle age. He was handsome but stocky, wearing brown corduroy trousers, plastic blue glasses, and a paint-splattered cream smock. Squashed into his left hand was a Diet Coke can.
“Jesus.” He stopped suddenly. “It looks like The Virgin fucking Suicides in here. What did you all get up to last night?” His jaw tightened. The room fell quiet. “And who the fuck left the lift door open? I had to walk up all three fucking flights of stairs.” All of this he delivered in a light Scottish burr, an Edinburgh lilt.
I glanced over his tanned, slightly oily skin and his broad shoulders, which were rising and falling from the exertion of his climb. Lawrence, though Mary had called him Law. He was the great-grandson of the female founder of the Melrose Academy. I’d spent my journey here reading an interview with a famous artist he’d taught in London during the early 2000s, a woman who went on to paint a controversial, but adored, portrait of an American president. His criticism could be stark, apparently, at times even brutally honest. But she was slavishly devoted to him and credited all her successes to his “foundational” teaching. The current intake studied us nervously, eager to see if his outburst had disturbed us. All except Mary, who lifted her chin toward a beam of light and shut her eyes.
Lawrence turned to us then. His voice marginally softened. “I get a very bad back, you see. And if I’m injured, I can’t teach, so they can’t paint and you can’t model.” He ran a hand through his floppy brown hair. “Did you find refreshments?”
No one had, but we nodded.
“Good.” He flicked a piece of paper straight in his hand and studied it. “Well, thank all of you for coming. Lots of familiar faces,” he said, speaking quickly. “And for those who haven’t done this before, I may as well tell you now, the process is a tad odd. We used to ask models to submit a headshot, but it’s better for the students to see you in person before deciding whether you’re right for them. It’s a big investment of time on their part, so don’t get offended if no one wants to use you. We’ll pay you for your time today, anyway. Then there’s always next term and next term and next term, et cetera. We’ve been here for over a hundred years.” He gestured toward the idle students and gave a theatrically camp sigh. “And, as you can see, no one’s going anywhere. Allora. Let’s get to it, shall we? You students know the drill by now. When I call your name out, it’ll be your turn to choose. Simple enough.”
