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CHAPTER 1

One morning in late September 1956 Jeff Mitchell and Alan Roberts, two callow youths, were on board a steam train travelling from east to west across North Lincolnshire. They were en route to Doncaster and had a Third Class compartment all to themselves.

'You know Alan, this landscape would be a tough subject for any artist,' remarked Jeff as he gazed out of the train window across a vista of flat, featureless fields pierced by canals as straight as rulers. 'I mean, it's so dull even Constable would have found it hard to paint.'

Alan, who sat opposite, reluctantly raised his eyes from a copy of the Daily Telegraph. He then glanced briefly to his right and nodded agreement.

'Never mind Jeff. In ten minutes we'll be in Doncaster. Change there and it's a direct run north to Newcastle. Catch a bus to Whitley Bay and we're there.'

Jeff wondered at Alan's calm. For, despite the soothing, trundling pace of the train, his mind was racing: he was both anxious and excited. After all, this journey was a watershed for them both. It marked their transition from schoolboys to undergraduates, from dependence upon their parents to independence. Their families and homes were already far behind and Jeff sensed that he would not return - permanently at least - to the scenes of his childhood. He'd never been away from home for any extended period before, so naturally he was worried about whether or not he would be able to cope.

'I wonder what the lodgings will be like?' said Alan, abruptly folding his paper. 'Just so long as the food's edible.'

So, thought Jeff, Alan's anxious too. 'What worries me most,' Jeff responded, 'is the amount of the grant. I wonder if it’s enough to survive on. It doesn't seem much money for three months.'

'It's a case of having to,' replied Alan sagely.

'Spare me the folk wisdom,' Jeff said sarcastically, 'that's the sort of remark my mother's always making.'
Other concerns troubled Jeff, concerns he was unwilling to share with Alan. Would he be able to overcome the shyness and awkwardness that so often prevented him from enjoying life to the full? Would he get on with the tutors and the other students? Would his work be up to university standard? And, most crucial of all, would he meet her?

Still, he reflected, it's exhilarating: a new place, new people, and a chance to paint for four years. What more could an aspiring artist desire?

'Have you always wanted to be an artist Jeff?' asked Alan reading his thoughts.

'Ever since I was in short trousers,' he replied, 'when I found I had an aptitude for drawing and painting and when I discovered they were such pleasurable activities. I can lose myself for hours in a drawing. Did I ever tell you that my father fought in Norway during the war? Well, he brought back some colour postcards - fishing boats on the fiords, the midnight sun, that sort of thing. Well, for some reason these kitsch images fascinated me, I copied them over and over again. Then the art teachers at school praised my juvenile efforts. I suppose you tend to try harder at activities that bring those kinds of rewards.

Of course, when I used to tell people about my ambition, my parents - being working class - used to ask the practical question - "How on earth are you going to make a living as an artist, child?" - over and over again. I couldn't think of an answer, but you know me, when I want something I can be pretty stubborn. So I just kept insisting. What about you? Have you always wanted to be an engineer?'

'Well,' replied Alan, 'I've always liked building machines and taking them to bits to see how they work. For years I played with a Meccano set I was given for Christmas. But I didn't think of engineering as a career until I was fourteen when I read a biography of the great Robert Stephenson. By the way, he designed the High Level Bridge across the Tyne. I'm really looking forward to seeing it.'

Jeff was glad he was not making the journey alone, even though the freckled faced teenager sitting opposite was not a close friend. At his all-male grammar school the boys doing science subjects had vastly outnumbered the boys doing art subjects, and the two groups hadn't mixed much. In fact, antagonism between the two groups had been fostered by Mr Benson, the headmaster, who thought the future belonged to science and technology not the arts or humanities. Alan and Jeff came from the same part of town, so this was something else they had in common.

At Doncaster the two eighteen year olds waited impatiently for over an hour for their connection. They paced up and down the windswept platforms of the station. Surrounded by marshalling yards, Doncaster station seemed to Jeff what Limbo - if such a place existed - must be like. To kill time they consumed numerous bags of crisps and cups of scalding hot tea from the station buffet. The tea was vile, like brown washing-up water. Jeff borrowed Alan's paper and scanned the headlines but the stories about the gathering Suez crisis and the EOKA bomb blast in Cyprus failed to engage his interest. The events were a long way away and he had other things on his mind.

At last, to the delight of the ever-present train spotters, the London to Newcastle express arrived in a cloud of steam and acrid smoke. 

Jeff and Alan grabbed the nearest, empty, Third Class compartment and hauled their heavy cases aboard. A metal trunk containing more of Jeff's things had been sent ahead. He hoped it had arrived safely. Once the train had picked-up speed, the clickerty-click of the rails and the rhythmical flashing of the telegraph poles caused Jeff to doze. Past York he awoke with a start and gazed with a fresh eye at the landscape unreeling on both sides. The train was climbing, ever climbing, and the land was undulating more and more. Clumps of pine made their appearance and moor land grass could be seen between the cultivated fields of dark, ploughed earth. A procession of cumulus clouds streamed across the path of the train from west to east superimposing a pattern of light and dark upon the land beneath. On the lonely hill farms, the only animals to be seen were flocks of grazing sheep. Even a townie such as Jeff registered the marked difference between the corn-based agriculture of his home county and the animal-based agriculture of the more northerly land they were now traversing.

Then the express began to thread its way through high stone cuttings. Huge quarries abruptly came into view. Next to one quarry a whole hillside of trees had been turned light grey by drifting clouds of stone dust. Sometimes, as the pounding train emerged whistling from the gloom of a cutting, a vast panorama was revealed. In the far distance Jeff picked out the imposing country houses of the aristocracy or rich industrialists. Their neo-classical mansions were invariably sited on rising ground in order to command the prospects before them. And the fronts of the houses faced south-west to capture as much of the sunshine as possible.

Jeff had seen this view once before. His mind went back to the previous year when he had made the same journey lugging a cumbersome portfolio containing examples of his paintings and drawings in order to attend an interview at the art department of the University. Since his appointment was for 10 a.m., he had had to stay overnight in Newcastle. Walking northwards from the Central Station to conserve the few pounds his father had given him, Jeff had booked into a scruffy bed and breakfast in a once fashionable Victorian terrace a short distance from the University campus. Much to Jeff's distaste he had had to share a room with a stranger. However, the man - a travelling salesman from Manchester - occupying the other bed had turned out to be a pleasant fellow. He had even insisted on leafing through the contents of Jeff's portfolio, and had praised the work highly too. Jeff didn't take much notice of the man's opinion - he had no reason to trust the stranger's critical judgement - but, even so, the incident had boosted his confidence.

Alone in the bedroom the next morning, Jeff had been strangely reluctant to face the day. Ignoring the landlady's repeated shouts that his breakfast was ready, Jeff - feeling randy - had masturbated into the rough hotel sheets. It was, he told himself, the best way to get rid of surplus nervous energy.

Still dressed in his school clothes - a dark blue blazer decorated with the grammar school badge and a pair of neatly pressed, fawn-coloured, cavalry twill trousers - Jeff had been interviewed by the art department's head, Professor Benjamin Lawrence. The Prof was a tall intimidating figure: his body reminded Jeff of a giraffe's and his limbs appeared to be completely uncoordinated, so that one couldn't predict his movements. His face was remarkably ugly too but the worst feature of all was a severe stutter that made all his listeners cringe with embarrassment and concern. As he struggled mightily to pronounce the word on the tip of his tongue, the natural impulse was to help him, but this was obviously out the question. One simply had to wait until he had expelled the word by sheer force no matter how long it took. Jeff found it hard to make sensible responses to questions while he was being showered with spittle from the Professor's protruding, slavering lips. It astonished Jeff that a man with such a disability had been able to reach such a position of eminence.

As it turned out, Jeff had no problem getting in. He was even excused the normal entrance exam. The Professor had acknowledged the academic competence demonstrated by Jeff's watercolours and pen and ink drawings. But he had been more impressed by a gauche, sincerely observed portrait of Jeff's mother painted on a sheet of cardboard. This work was in fact Jeff's very first oil painting. He had only to think of it to smell again the distinctive odours of the tubes of pigments, the oil medium and the turpentine. What exquisite pleasure there had been in squeezing the colours out one by one on the pristine palette made from an oblong of light brown mahogany. But he also recalled what a difficult medium it was to master: the colours dried at different rates; paint took hours, days even, to dry. Oil pigment was slippery, sticky, viscous, infinitely malleable stuff and it was so easy when blending contrasting hues to produce a muddy sludge instead of the desired shade.

Jeff sighed as he recalled the hours of effort that portrait had cost. There had been no help from his art lessons at school because only watercolours and poster paints were used there. He had been forced to buy a cheap, badly printed How to Paint in Oils manual from the local art shop in order to learn the rudiments of the craft.

'Here's Durham!' exclaimed Alan, shattering Jeff's reverie. The train reduced speed and slid quietly across a viaduct that afforded the two passengers an uninterrupted view of the ancient city.

'Now Jeff, there's a scene which isn't dull,' said Alan gesturing towards the huge bulk of the Norman Cathedral and the castle crowning steeply wooded banks at the foot of which they could glimpse the surging, muddy waters of the River Wear. 'A painter couldn't go far wrong with a view like that,' he added.

Jeff demurred. 'The trouble is Alan it's too much like a tourist postcard - too pretty and picturesque to make a good subject.'

'There's no pleasing you artists,' responded Alan, clearly exasperated.

'The beauty of a painting,' Jeff insisted portentously, 'is different from the beauty of its subject matter. Remember, Chardin created masterpieces by painting pots and pans.'

'Bugger Chardin, whoever he is,' replied Alan, 'that Cathedral over there is a fantastic feat of engineering.'

Once through Durham, the signs of northern industrialism became brutally evident. Ugly metal sheds and dismal factories making such things as chemicals and electrical equipment lined the track on either side. Ahead were many coal mines and shipyards. It was, Jeff realized, an altogether harsher environment he was going to than the one in which he had been brought up.

At long last, as the day drew to a close, the express slowed among the seemingly endless rows of terraces of Gateshead. Does this town have any public buildings at all? Jeff asked himself. He also wondered if the identical streets and houses meant that the people who inhabited them thought alike and lived identical lives.

As the train eased its way across a railway bridge spanning the River Tyne valley, through the right-hand window a splendid view became visible. To the east Jeff and Alan could see three bridges, for both road and rail, set close together but at different heights from the water. The nearest was Stephenson's High Level Bridge, then far below was the Swing Bridge for local traffic, and above and beyond that was the massive steel arc of the Tyne Bridge, a suspension road bridge. The latter, Jeff knew from his geography lessons at school, was the main link between Gateshead and Newcastle; it was also the route of the trunk road joining the south of England to Northumberland and, further still, to Scotland.

From Jeff's vantage point, the banks of the river seemed fairly steep; buildings of all ages, types and styles were stacked one above the other in serried ranks on either side. The sight impressed Jeff. Here, he reflected, was all the drama of a metropolis. But before he had time to savour the scene, the train had crossed the bridge and entered the curved platforms of Newcastle's Central Station.

'N'castle at last!' exclaimed Alan, imitating the Geordie pronunciation of their home town.

As they made their way towards the exit, Jeff noted with satisfaction the generous size and elegance of the station's architecture with its Victorian iron columns, barrel roof and neo-classical stone portico. He also grinned when he saw, beyond the end of the platform, what appeared to be a medieval castle in an excellent state of repair. For some reason, the incongruous juxtaposition of modern steam engines and ancient fortress amused him.

The two travellers emerged from the dimly-lit, cavernous spaces of the station, and dragged their cases across the bustle and traffic of Neville Street. A cool, fresh breeze was blowing and there was a hint of salt in the air. It was now early evening. Lurid orange street lights had just come on and some were still flickering into life against the darkening sky. All around people were leaving work and hurrying home.

It didn't take Jeff and Alan long to find the bus stop they needed. As always when visiting a strange town, Jeff was struck by the difference in the livery of the buses. In the case of Newcastle it was yellow and cream. Jeff wondered why they always chose such awful colour combinations.

Waiting at the stop, he was surprised to find the pavement covered in bird droppings. He looked around for the culprits expecting to see a flock of pigeons but instead the wheeling, squawking creatures turned out to be seagulls. Of course, he said to himself, the sea isn't far away. It was somehow comforting to know the calm horizon of the sea was nearby should he feel the need to gaze upon it.

A double-decker bus arrived and took them the nine miles to Whitley Bay on the east coast. In spite of the presence of seagulls in the city, the seaside resort was much further from the centre of Newcastle than Jeff or Alan had imagined. It crossed their minds that there might be a problem getting to the University. By now darkness had fallen, so the travellers could see little of their new environment. In any case, they were too tired to care what it looked like.

 

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