All that Glitters, page 7
‘Oh, you’re the guy from the woods. You were mimicking me!’ Gosh, she hadn’t noticed his looks then – so far away and in the dark. ‘Erm, well, can I get to my room, please?’
He stood up. ‘I’m Sam. Did you like your present?’
He spoke in a gravelly faux-cockney accent, like someone in a Brit gangster movie.
‘What present?’
‘The painting. I left it under your door.’
‘You did that?’ Chloe was horrified.
‘I thought you’d like it. It’s my favourite piece.’
Chloe slid her key into the lock and went in. She turned around to face Sam, still hovering outside her door.
‘Well, who are you?’
‘I’m Sam Smith.’
‘Oh. I think I read about you in Cherwell.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Chloe reached under her bed and pulled out the painting, glad that Isabel had forbidden her from throwing it away.
She laid it out on her bed and gazed at it, before turning to look at him, all dishevelled and stunning. Now she understood. The beauty behind the mess.
‘It’s like …you,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you.’
They stared at each other, neither of them looking away, neither of them talking.
‘I knew I would find you,’ Sam said eventually. ‘Can I paint you?’
‘Now that is a chat-up line no woman can resist.’ Chloe’s face lit up.
‘Do you meditate?’ Sam asked.
‘Err …no.’
‘We can meditate together.’
‘Um, perhaps.’
‘And do you communicate?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Do you communicate? With nature? How do you make sense of your relationship to nature, and the world? How can you communicate without understanding? Without listening? Hearing?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Sometimes I don’t talk.’
‘OK.’
‘I just listen.’
‘Right.’
‘Let’s go!’
Sam beckoned towards the door. Chloe hesitated and then followed him out. They strolled in amiable silence through the bustling town until they reached the River Cherwell.
‘I don’t know why I’m doing this!’ Chloe giggled. ‘I barely know you. This is absurd.’
‘But it also feels very natural, right?’ He looked at her.
‘Actually, it does,’ Chloe said, surprised at the realization.
‘So tell me about yourself.’
‘Well, what do you want to know?’
A couple of hours later, they were still talking and Chloe had told Sam pretty much everything about herself and yet she knew little about him. She petered off.
‘Your turn, Sam.’
‘I’ll paint you here,’ Sam said by way of reply.
‘But there’s no paint.’
‘Let’s go back to nature.’
He walked over to the river and knelt down beside it. He was silent and unmoving for a while and Chloe wondered whether he was praying. Then he washed both of his hands in the water before gouging out handfuls of muddy grass from the bank beside it.
He walked over to Chloe and smeared his own face and then hers, so that they were both covered in mud.
‘May I paint you?’ he asked again.
‘You’re …crazy …’ But Chloe pulled off her sweater, so she was standing in just jeans and a vest top. She held out her bare arms and raised her face to him. ‘Paint me.’
He took her hands in his, gently massaging the mud into her fingers. Then he took her left arm and ran his hands up and down it, stroking and massaging her flesh. He scurried back to the river to wet his hands once more and gather more earth, which he carefully spread over her shoulders and smoothed up and down her other arm. Finally he took her face in his hands, leaving five brown finger marks on each cheek. When he had finished he took a step back and contemplated his work.
Chloe contemplated him. Compared with his artist’s passion and depth, Ol seemed like a puppy running around on heat. Their night together had been amazing, but her fever for him now seemed merely an itch, which she’d already firmly scratched and rid herself of.
‘I totally love you!’ Chloe laughed.
Piper pulled her hair into a perky ponytail high on her head and picked up her tennis racket. She knew she was overdoing it with all this sport and the Union as well as keeping on top of her studies but she missed her boyfriend, Chad, so terribly she had to keep herself busy.
She stretched out a well-toned leg and frowned. What had Isabel Suarez-Octavio and William Austin been doing at the Cherwell offices as she was leaving? She thought of the brilliant articles she had coming out in week seven, the week of the presidency election, and smiled. She had killed herself for them. It was her best stuff yet and perfectly illustrated how dedicated she was to the Union and debating, and that she was the best candidate for the job. Piper genuinely liked her opponent. Chloe was sweet. But she was woefully ill-equipped to run anything other than a big house in the country.
Chapter 13
Chloe looked down at her tight jeans – bought pre-puberty when she’d been two stone lighter and ripped everywhere, including just under her bottom from years of wear and tear. Her blue shirt, covered in paint and missing the top buttons as a result of one of Sam’s fits of inspiration, now showed far too much cleavage. Hot with anxiety and nerves, she had piled up all of her hair in a mad bird’s nest on top of her head and shoved a pencil in it to hold it up. Her cheeks were flushed and she felt disgustingly sweaty.
‘Well, I’d better change into something smart before we do the rounds.’
‘No, go like that – you look like you’ve been making love nonstop for five days,’ Isabel said.
‘Eeew,’ squealed Chloe. ‘Anyway, Sam and I haven’t …yet. I think we will soon, though.’
‘Forget Sam. Don’t you realize how important today is? You need to look approachable, non-threatening, but still sexy. Today is your last chance to make an impression and you need all the votes you can get.’ Isabel looked her friend up and down approvingly.
‘Oh, come on, that’s so tacky!’ Chloe replied.
‘Look, sex makes the world go around – neglect it at your peril.’ When Chloe looked sceptical, Isabel went on. ‘Let’s think of, say, school as a microcosm of the world. Who were the kids who wielded the most influence over the other kids? They weren’t the brainiest, were they? No, they were the sexiest.’
‘Yeah but we were so young and naïve then. I mean, look at presidents and things – they’re not sexy.’
‘Oh I don’t know – I’d definitely give Obama one. But anyway, they don’t get there alone, do they? Why do you think presidents ally themselves with celebrities to get votes? Do you think anyone would care that Angelina Jolie adopted a baby if she didn’t have bee-stung lips? Come on, get your baps out and let’s go!’
‘You’re sick, you know that?’ Chloe laughed. She felt sick herself. Sick with nerves.
They started at St Hilda’s. The exquisite setting on the River Cherwell, with its lush, grassy banks resplendent with the last of the meadowsweet, made up for the new, unattractive concrete building of the college. It had been the last all-girls’ college in the university before becoming co-ed a short while ago. ‘Let’s appeal to the feminist element,’ whispered Isabel as they closed in. Together with William, Ol and an army of obedient fellow students and other wannabe Union hacks, who had been promised favours of all kinds should Chloe be elected, they had divvied up the thirty-eight Oxford colleges, so that at every single one there were people chatting up the boys and girls on Chloe’s behalf and finding ways to remind them that today was election day and they should ‘Vote Constance for Constant Thrills’.
On hearing that, Sam had said that the Union and everybody involved could ‘suck my dick’, which Chloe had duly done. There was no way Sam was going to help out, but otherwise they had a buoyed-up supportive team and everyone was raring to go. To overtly canvass for votes was technically not allowed, so they had to be inventive.
They’d sent Ol to the left-leaning Wadham and told him to leave his chauffeur behind; meanwhile Will was welcomed with open arms at traditional Christ Church, where everyone already knew him from school.
Back at St Hilda’s the girls debated whether Thatcher would have had the confidence to become the first female prime minister had Somerville been co-ed while she was there. And they questioned why men had traditionally obtained a higher proportion of firsts than women at Oxford.
‘I think it’s ’cos they work harder than us,’ sighed Chloe.
Isabel shook her head. ‘Apparently we actually spend more hours revising. They did a study a few years ago and came up with the “bullshit factor”. Basically men often have a more confident style, so their answers are deemed worthier of a first than our generally more cautious, balanced answers.’
At the legendarily academic St John’s, they argued over calculus and laughed conspicuously at the absurdity of a variety of mathematical conundrums before soliciting an opinion on the matter.
Outside ‘Rugger Bugger’ Teddy Hall, they changed into their tennis whites – with extra short skirts – and jogged into the bar for a tipple and a flirt.
‘Can you pass me that bottle of wine with your big, strong, rugby-player’s arms? I need to quench my thirst and fuel up before heading to the Union,’ tittered Chloe at the college scrum half as Isabel kicked her shins.
‘ A bit more subtlety,’ she muttered.
‘Oh yeah. Forgot about elections today,’ said the six-foot-seven barrel of brawn. ‘You’ll be getting my vote …’
Exhausted from the day’s hustling, Chloe lay her head on Sam’s bony chest and held him tightly to her in her bed.
‘This is nice, just holding each other. We don’t have to do anything else if you don’t want to,’ Sam said.
‘This is lovely. But tell me more about you.’
Sam flinched. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you love painting and sculpting?’
Sam held her hand too tight, not speaking.
‘Ouch, you’re hurting me.’ Chloe winced, trying to extricate her hand.
‘Sorry, babe.’ He was silent for a few minutes and then said, ‘I used to wish I didn’t love painting. It wasn’t the done thing at my school. They used to laugh at me. Spit on me when they saw me in the playground drawing.’
‘How awful!’
‘They hated me because I never had the right clothes, couldn’t afford the latest trainers. They hated my long hair. They used to kick me, and call me a faggot because of it – long before any of them even understood the words they used. Then, when I was ten, I decided to work on my first large portrait. My teacher gave me a special A3 sheet of paper and every playtime I would take it to a corner of the playground to work a little on it. After a month, when it was nearly finished, a group of boys cornered me and asked me for the drawing. I said no. That drawing meant more than I even knew. It was like a piece of me; a body part or something. At least that’s how it felt when they ripped it from me. I physically couldn’t move. I was crippled without it. Then …’ Sam paused and hit the wall with the side of his clenched fist. ‘Then they threw it on the floor and started jumping up and down on it. Sullying it with their feet. And it hurt so much they could have been jumping on me.’
‘Come here.’ Chloe cradled Sam’s head in her arms.
‘What happened after that?’ she asked gently.
‘They said I had to stop drawing and painting because if I didn’t, they would kick the shit out of me.’ He spoke into her warm neck. ‘I tried so hard not to but life was kind of unbearable without art. So I started to draw again and on my eleventh birthday they beat me so hard that I ended up in hospital. After that I went to a different school. But I kept playing up, being naughty. I didn’t see the point of it. I was expelled from everywhere and told I had a filthy attitude. My mum’s a single parent and life was hard enough for her as it was. I feel awful for what I put her through.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Chloe soothed.
‘That’s what my mum says. But it was. It was my fault. I didn’t have to react like that. But Mum says she knows I’m gonna make it as an artist. She believes in me the way she used to believe in my useless dad. This time I won’t let her down.’
That night Chloe slept soundly and happily, forgetting about the dreaded vote-counting ceremony the next day. Instead she dreamed of a life with Sam. She felt guilty for loving Sam’s heartache, but his admission of it and his sadness had made her feel close to him. She felt like she had broken through a barrier.
Chapter 14
The next morning, Chloe felt bereft when she realized that Sam was no longer in her bed, but then she spotted a tiny charcoal drawing on a Post-it note stuck to her bedside table. It was of herself sleeping. She was struck by how profoundly talented he was. This, unlike the beast canvas, was the type of art she could relate to. She felt deeply moved. She picked it up and turned it over. On the back he had scrawled in pencil:
Had to get up and paint – needed the morning light. Come to my studio later and we’ll have dinner.
Yours,
Sam
He’d forgotten that it was her big day today, so she wouldn’t be free for dinner. Truth be told, he was completely uninterested in her involvement in the Union but Chloe didn’t mind. He was an artist and that was everything to him. He couldn’t be expected to bother with the day to day of student life. She floated out of bed and dressed quickly before heading to The Club for lunch to join Isabel and the rest of Team Chloe.
When she arrived the place was heaving. The toothless old man was hunched over the piano and Ol was leaning on the top of it, beer in hand, watching him play at close range. As the old man sped up, his back lurched up and down each time he hit the keys. The crowd began whooping and cheering.
Ol waved to Chloe and Isabel and the old man swivelled around. Spotting Isabel, and no doubt remembering her marvellous dance at the start of Michaelmas term, the pianist let out a strange noise. If he’d had teeth it would probably have sounded like a welcome cry but instead it was a frenzied gurgle. He sprung up off his stool and hobbled over to her.
Ol took over his vacated seat and began playing instead, as the pianist led Isabel to the middle of the room and began flailing his arthritic arms and legs in excitement. Unfortunately Ol only knew one song. A fast but simple number, which he played over and over as Isabel did her best to move in time with her partner’s manic movements.
By now around fifteen girls had gathered around the piano, many of them draped on the instrument itself, others fussing over Ol, massaging his shoulders as he played.
‘My card’s behind the bar!’ he shouted above the din to Will, who was being brought up to date on the previous day’s canvassing by Chloe. ‘Get some champagne in for everyone.’ He turned back to the piano and played his song for the umpteenth time, grinning at all the incredulous and insincere marvelling at his musical prowess.
‘Ol, you’re amazing, where did you learn to play?’ said the fawning girls.
Will led Chloe to the bar, asked for three magnums of champagne and began pouring glasses for everybody in sight.
‘Are you sure you’ve got enough there, Will?’ Isabel shouted, laughingly dodging the old man’s attempts to give her a piggy back.
‘We’re not leaving here until the votes are counted this evening. Might as well make the most of it. Come here, this is for you.’
Isabel grabbed her new friend’s hand and led him over to the bar. ‘This is Aiden. He’s played the piano here for over sixty-five years!’
Will handed Isabel and Aiden a glass of champagne. Aiden took his and winced as Ol began playing his naff tune yet again. He hobbled hurriedly back to the piano to retrieve his instrument.
‘What the hell are you all celebrating for? How can you be so sure I’ve won? Because I’m pretty sure I haven’t.’ Chloe realized she was genuinely unsure whether she even wanted to win. She would only really know how she actually felt the moment the results were announced.
Isabel and Will exchanged looks. ‘Whatever the vote, we can’t change it now so we might as we well try to enjoy the day,’ reasoned Will. ‘Besides, we covered every college. Piper didn’t.’
‘She didn’t need to. She’s had access to every single student via her column in Cherwell. I’ve been putting it off but I suppose I really ought to see what I’m up against. Has anyone got a copy?’ Isabel avoided eye contact and Will became suddenly preoccupied with a speck of dirt on the surface of the bar.
‘It, er, didn’t actually come out yesterday.’ He coughed. ‘There was a printer malfunction.’
He caught Isabel’s eye and she tried to suppress a giggle, clamping her mouth shut with her hand for a few seconds before bursting out in fits of laugher.
‘Oh god!’ howled Will, trying not to laugh. This only made Isabel laugh more and by now she was wiping away a tear, doubled up, her hand clutching her stomach.
‘Oh, you couldn’t have! You didn’t!’ Chloe stared at her friends, stony-faced with rage.
‘Chloe, let me tell you something.’ Isabel stared hard at her friend. ‘This is the real world. You need to grow up and stop being so naïve. There are people out there who aren’t nice. Bad, truly evil people. Will and I are your friends. Trust us.’
Ol walked over. ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea,’ he said, to break the tension.
‘What?’ they all chorused.
‘Er, cheers?’ He thrust a glass of champagne into Chloe’s hand.
‘Down it! Down it! Down it! Down it!’ chanted Will, until everyone in The Club was chanting along with him.
Chapter 15
By the time the excited group had made their way to the Union for the vote-counting ceremony, Chloe was already far too sozzled to notice Piper on her own outside, talking despondently to her long-distance boyfriend over the phone.
