The other room

THE OTHER ROOM

Alice's attention is claimed and taken outwards into interest in Cathy's figurines. Some are small, about the size of a curled up cat, some are attenuated and a quarter human sized, some are massive and bulky and heavier than Cathy herself. As she says happily and playfully:

“Derek thinks I should get rid of half of these, chuck them into a skip or something. He says they'll bring down the floorboards and collapse through the living room ceiling!”

Alice feels a thrill of horror, Cathy has worked hard, made preliminary sketches then enrolled on holiday Raku working courses to make her figures and have access to a kiln to fire them. It sounds an unlikely venue for high Art – Alice gives it a capital A – but as she drinks in the birdwoman's weariness and sees how literally her hidden dread oppresses her and gets her down, she sees that Cathy has realised something essential to all humanity in this sequence. Flattened onto her stomach by the weight of the dread, the birdwoman turned her enquiring beaked head and reaches one arm behind her to scoop the monster up and bring it round so she can see it clearly. In the last of the sequence she sits with her head bent inquisitively over the dread, no longer hidden or secret but cradled in both hands and supported by updrawn knees, and surveys it dispassionately with resolute intelligence. Her whole posture is changed, she has shed her weariness and is alert, braced in enquiry, looking at her dread in the plain light of day. The light lines of the birdwoman are pleasing to the eye, she turns to Cathy with a smile:

“I like this, I like the birdwoman idea too, it's very expressive. It's really good!”

Cathy flushes and looks pleased, and Alice moves on. The figurines are displayed on white sheets and there's not much room to move, one is seated on the frame of a chair, roots – real roots from what looks like a torn up privet hedge – descend through the seat to the ground, the birdwoman's face is set and grim, her clenched hands rest on her knees. Cathy comes to Alice's side and explains:

“That's called the Witness. I heard a fucking terrible account of a bad experience at work and my job was to hear it through and witness it, I felt rooted to the spot hence the hedge roots – I found them in a skip. I used my body as the model, making casts with bandages and plaster of paris, I've never been so cold in my life and the heating was at full blast! “

Some sweet, wild, fresh intimations stir Alice's spirit, a sense of rightness that she cannot grasp like a thing and hang on to, but which gladdens her and makes her feel real. These sweet wild intimations have occurred to her before in figurative flights of the mind like the rose image, she's tried to write poetry under their influence then afterwards felt desolate and doubted herself and her efforts, as if her poems weren't “real” poems like other people's. She should have had better trust in herself, Cathy has trusted her imaginative insights in making her figurines. Perhaps next time Alice's spirit is stirred she'll be brave enough to trust herself, having seen what Cathy has achieved. “The wind bloweth where it listeth” and the wind is the motion of the spirit, it is right and real, it comes and goes, no-one can automatically press the switch and put the light on, not with the motions of the spirit. Cathy's work is the reality of what the spirit can bring about, like belief in God, almost, that supreme confidence the spirit lives. For a moment Alice is transfigured by conviction of her own reality and the reality of her imaginative insights, almost immediately a dark tide of doubt sweeps over her, there is no God and her poems are psychotic ravings. No, the spirit is true and real, if ungraspable, and here is a small birdwoman with her beak almost probing a book held in both hands. Cathy stands beside her looking happy and expectant:

“That's for you, I made it as a surprise because I'm going to be very busy over the next few weeks. She's called the Reader, do you like her Alice?”

“For me! But she's brilliant!”

Alice is too shy to speak of her spirit stirring, her sweet conviction, however fragile, that she is real. Those ominous words, I'm going to be very busy, she rightly interprets as a brush off, but that is crowded out by feelings of delight at Cathy's too generous present. Meanwhile Cathy is pushing her specs up the bridge of her nose and saying:

“I'll wrap her up for you, she's brittle that's the curse of working with Raku clay, but if I pad her and pack her safely in a box she should survive the journey. I've some bubble wrap somewhere... “

Cathy starts hunting behind the sheet covering a low table, she is successful in her search and starts wrapping the Reader in sheets of bubble wrap, her long sensitive fingers quick and deft. She continues to talk:

“My Raku work is a hobby, really, it's my art therapy work that's the main thing. I've always wanted to help people. Right, can you hold the box and I'll lift her in?”

“Like this? Careful, she's catching on an edge, slide her in. I think you're a real artist, your Raku work is as important as your paid work, they're both careers.”

Cathy tapes the box shut, and rests on her heels, her eyes very bright behind her specs: “No, it's just my hobby. Careful with your box, Alice, I'll have to let you go, I've got people coming round.”

They descend the stairs and Cathy sees Alice to the front door: “It's not too heavy. Take care, bye Alice.”

“Goodbye.”

The front door closes Alice out of Cathy's life, temporarily perhaps but Alice has been rather hurried off. Now she is alone with the rain and neon lights, inky shadows in small, hedged front gardens move as Alice moves past, cradling her cargo in its little box. It's a bit awkward carrying it because she can't see her feet, she concentrates on scanning the shining reaches of the pavement coming up in front, checking there are no obstacles. Alice is poised on a knife edge, happy with her present, unhappy about being dismissed, hurried off and being told how busy Cathy is going to be. She gives up and thinks instead of arriving home with her sculpture intact.