Art Ruler

He was known, to generations of Brylcreemed, broad-vowelled boys, as Abe. Not Abraham, surely, for his surname was as Irish as my two grandmas. Probably Augustus, Brendan, Edward or Alfred, Bernard, Edgar; some pretentious string of saintly names.

Though smaller than many of his charges, Abe dominated the art room as viciously as any emperor ruled Rome or Russia, though on a reduced scale, of course. His armament was a strap like a barber’s strop, thick but whippy, capable of making terrifying cracks when slammed onto inky oak desk tops. Commit one of his petty crimes and, if you were lucky, you would be hit three, four or six times, on outstretched hands, one held alternately under the other to provide a platform. Woe betide the child who tried the trick of arcing downwards to soften the blows; more hits resulted, on the buttocks if Abe were really riled. This was the ultimate sanction; having to bend over for hurt and humiliation on schoolboy cosmic scale.

About art and artists we learned nothing. When, frequently, Abe rambled verbally through one of his irrelevant dream-gardens my response was to stare out of the vast, semi-circular window, the pride of the hill top school, a false lure for parents. A proper art room. Excellent northern light. Nod, nod. As if they knew!

Across the road was the public house where the red-skinned music teacher, who sometimes, when semi-sober, taught us Cherry Ripe and Ash Grove songs, topped up his anti-cosmetic, vein-purpling process with lunchtime spirit indulgence. Sometimes I saw him nipping out of school early and in through the drinking den’s double doors, escaping schoolboy monsters and his undoubted inner demons. As Abe developed his monologues, my eyes would take in the soot-smudged facades of Yorkshire city-edge houses and the escapist’s distant hills on which were stunted, eastward leaning trees battered by fierce breezes which recently had whipped the whelky waves on Southport beach.

‘You boy!’ The shout! Abe would have you out. We would pray that he was in a good mood because then he might choose to use you as a circus extra instead of inflicting physical pain. Provided that you were smaller than he, my lot of course, he would place an object on your head. ‘Please let it be the whistle’ we implored our Catholic god but often, a truer test, he chose a tiny piece of chalk. ‘Keep still boy!’ Abe demanded of the ditherers. Like a golf professional he would eye the target and make practice weapon swipes It took the courage of Xerxes, if indeed he were courageous, not to duck. Swipe, swipe, swipe, like Mossies, like Hurricanes, like Fokker-Wolfs, buzzing before attacking. ‘Please, God!’ we holy boys prayed silently, anxious for our ears.

As far as I know, Abe never missed. All the times I experienced the trick, the tawse flew true and the target shot sideways to be caught by a self-congratulatory lad. ‘Play krikit for Yorkshire, one day, me.’ The sallow, sardonic face of the trickster would melt into a slight smile; his one orgasmic moment?

For a bright, springtime afternoon class, Abe set us the task of designing a poster. I was reliably bottom of the class in his ill-considered termly estimations but I began to enjoy the poster process. Rulers were allowed and there was no need to try to make the picture look like anything real. Words and colours, that was all, and I was at least quite good at words. Abe stalked the alleyways between the desks, hands clasped behind his back against the black, fraying, chalk-dusted academic gown, the clutched strap hanging down like a donkey’s appendage. He stopped behind me. I could hear the wheezy breathing, feel the portly body heat beaming from the hyperbolic belly. I was sure that my ears glowed visibly, so confident was I that for once the tyrant was going to mete out praise.

Adding more colour and inclining my head, making the satisfied aesthetic judgement, I awaited the words of approval. Abe said, ‘Boy!’ We were all ‘boy’ but I knew he meant me. I was instructed to proceed to the roll-around, conveyor-belt blackboard and I found it possible to believe that he was yet bent on the positive. My poster was perhaps outstanding. At his command I picked up chalk,. thinking that he was about to ask me to demonstrate, to the serried sniggering traitors, some trick which I had invented in my poster, some innovation which would revolutionise the advertising world.

Abe called out a name. ‘Hill!’ Perhaps he remembered that there was a boy called Hill, perhaps he was just lucky but there was such a one, a handsome boy who had smart jackets, fresh-pressed trousers and a clean shirt every day. Hill was reputed to have kissed a girl, an enviable feat which he had allegedly proved by producing a handkerchief smeared with lurid lipstick. He was to me, an alien but was memorable, no doubt, to art teachers. ‘Yessir?’ Hill responded smartly.

‘Spell your name, Hill, letter by letter and you, boy, you write it on the board, but,’ he added ominously before Hill could speak, ‘make all the letters touch as you have on this masterpiece.’ Abe gestured downwards towards my prized creation and, in that parentally-valued glancing northern light, I saw the glistening shower of spittle drops which sprayed contemptuously from his lips, thence wreckingly onto my poster. I would rather have been beaten by his stroppy strap than write Hill’s wretched apology for a surname. I was not stupid.

‘H’ Hill intoned. Shakily I wrote, then glanced at Abe whose mouth shape was already changing. ‘I’ chirped the smirking Hill. ‘I’ vanished into the right hand prop of ‘H’ and I convinced myself that the lipstick on Hill’s handkerchief had been stolen from his mother’s film star dressing table. Then, of course, came ‘L’ for laughter, the letter, to my satisfaction, only partially disappearing but the rude noise reverberating, creating a timeless echo of humiliation in my head. How they laughed. HL, HL, HL!

‘Let that be a lesson’ cried Abe, striding forward in his severely scuffed and squeaky shoes, black as his intentions. I thought, but did not say, ‘That’d be a change’, ‘Never,’ added the torturer, relishing his clever triumph, ‘never allow letters in a poster to touch each other.’ An absolute rule from Abe, the advertising guru.

I wanted to point out that words such as ‘Hill’ did not feature in my advertisement, which was replete with Os and Ws, that, had there been any confusion of contiguous letters, I would have ingeniously resolved the problem, that within sight across the road was a huge poster where the letters not only touched but intricately embraced each other but I dared stammer out not a single sentence.

‘Is that clear, boy?’ Abe asked, the leer still evident. I knew the nearest boys could see the water in my eyes, one or two even had the decency to lower their heads. I nodded.

Thanks, Abe.