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John Younger

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Connie's Canvas

for Constance Fenn

We never spoke throughout three years,
though I knew her name and most days watched
her pale blemished face and ashen hair
gleam faintly from the corner of the studio
where, fenced off by unused easels,
she preferred to paint.

Seldom seen at hops, pubs
or the student common room,
she finished enough paintings
for three Diploma shows,
but I remember only one -
resting untouched for dusty days.

It measured three feet by two
in a well-proportioned vertical.
Pinned to the easel, a note
in fine italic pale blue pencil
listed instructions to herself
for the work's completion.

Delicately worked, restrained in colour,
the subject showed a classical facade
of pitted creamy stucco,
perhaps the moonlit sole survivor
from some blitzed Nash terrace,
its background smoky uncertainty.

I like to speculate
on what the image may have meant:
possibly the glimmering house stood
for hope against the murky future
or else herself as artist, secret,
solitary, flawed yet luminous,

or again, was simply an attempt
at atmosphere, a mood.
I never saw the canvas finished
nor heard of her again,
yet, for more than four decades,
both have smouldered in the memory.

 

Page(s) 23-24

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