The Mad Artist

Another Sunday in the village. We went for a walk to the Green, lingered at the bus stop to read the rumours and share a smoke. The one place open was the garage, selling fags and sweets.The long haired gardener, a shambling man always in wellies, ambled into view with his buckets. He was other worldly. His shy smile and innocent face gave him the appearance of a fool.

"Hello"

That was a brazen invitation to us to be cheeky and provocative. He had an accent, north of England, Coronation Street. We rolled our eyes, tapped ash, blew lines of smoke.

"I'd like to do your portrait." Snorts and giggles. "Are you a pervert?"

I told my friend, "No he's alright." I had often seen him wandering, as I wandered, along the lanes, climbing over the stiles, stopping to look at the sky. I knew he was a bit like me.

My friend tried to engage the man in banter. He smiled. There was something about his mouth that I cannot recall clearly now, maybe the front teeth were missing or possibly they were exceedingly small. "Do you want to come to my studio".

We sashayed behind him, mocking his roughly chopped hair and grubby old raincoat, till we reached the little Baptist chapel where he worked. In the cool, musty half light he introduced himself as Peter, a sculptor and offered us coffee. Legs slung over greasy arms of easy chairs my friend and I cross examined him. Peter did not smoke. He had kind of heard of pop music ("Beatles? Yes I think so"), but preferred Beethoven. He lived in the Gothic House, a property in the village that was noteworthy for its fine gable end mural of St George and the Dragon. The owners supported struggling artists and allowed them to live in their home. Over forty years later I had a brief exchange of emails with the son of these generous patrons, who said "Peter was by no means the only artist my parents helped, but he was the oddest."His oddity is perhaps why we named him The Mad Artist, for we found it inexplicable that he had no comprehension of fashion or popular culture and seemed to spend his time either in that dank old building with all his lumps of clay and sheep skulls, or pottering around rich people's gardens, being paid in cakes and jam.

Peter said he would like to do a sculpture of me, a bust. I agreed and persuaded my parents to allow me to sit for him, on an upturned altar, twice a week throughout the winter of 1969. Each time I arrived Peter would be quietly delighted, the chair waiting on the altar, an electric bar heater in front and his masterpiece behind, enormous, beneath a dampened tarpaulin. He would shyly lift the tarp and tell me how work was progressing on his concept piece - a labyrinthine mass of clay, whose topography seemed to me barely ever changed, yet to him held a wonderful meaning.

Apologies for his inability to pay me for those cold cramped hours were accompanied by gifts - Peter simply passed on to me me what the village ladies had given to him, so that when the three months were up I had an odd collection of a silk scarf, some classical music and various ethnic tins and pots, as well as the strange experience of seeing myself made dead in clay.

When the bust was cast Peter asked if my parents would like to see it. I guessed he was hoping they would buy it and if ever justification were needed of my name for him, it was in that vain hope he harboured. From the moment we all saw him trudging over the field at the back of our house, knowing he would have to climb over the wall to get to the door, it was evident that Peter did not live up to my parents' expectation of an Artist. They politely served tea in cups and saucers and said they would have to give it some thought and yes it looked just like their eldest daughter. Uncanny. Artistic.
I bumped into the mad artist a few times in the years after, once in Leicester Square, where he gave his familiar broken smile as if it was nothing unusual to see me there. Another time he was sitting on a bench in the town, staring at an old building. 

“Hello. I’m thinking about lines. Straight or bendy? I think bendy don’t you, like your hair.”
The mad artist. I never saw him again.