Jackson and Jerusalem

She told me on the phone that her gaff was called Jerusalem. This was before I knew who she was, or anything about her, and I thought it was an awful weird name to call a place. But famous people are always doing that sort of thing, like calling their kids Banana or Tuesday and nobody bats an eye. Her gaff was easy to find – the walls were painted a mad orange – but it was still a typical auld dear’s place, with the windows cluttered up with Saint Anthony and the Child of Prague and swaggy curtains. Her voice was real posh, but I knew it would be, because Christopher talked like that and he was her nephew and my teacher. I hate yapping on the phone, so I said I’d call round, and she could have a look at me.

I stood in her doorway, smelling the hall’s beer-and-onion stink. Her hair was dyed off her head – black as a crow’s wing – and she was wearing a manky apron, covered in paint splotches. But she didn’t look at me like I was a scumbag. Behind her was a table with twenty different statues of the Blessed Virgin toppling over each other.

‘Christopher never said you were real holy,’ I said.

‘I’m not. Not on your fucking Nelly.’ She picked up a Mary, who was holding a nudie Jesus, and petted it. ‘I like their colours and their forms.’ She put the statue down and stuck out her hand. ‘Magda Bolding. I take it you’re Jackie?’

‘Not on your fucking Nelly,’ I said, doing a snobby accent like hers, and making the –ing in ‘fucking’ ting around inside my mouth like a pinball through Sharkey’s Shootout. ‘The name’s Jackson.’

Magda grinned. ‘OK, Jackson. I think Christopher was right: you and I are going to get along.’ She slammed the front door and flapped me through the hall to the kitchen, like I was an escaped hen. ‘Let’s have a goo at you.’

Leaning against her sink, I twitched at the ends of my hoodie, while Magda looked me up and down. I felt a bit thick in my new combats: they were too baggy, too camouflagey, too everything. She squinced up her eyes.

‘What?’ I said.

She took my face in her hands and tilted my head; her fingers were cool and soft, like a doctor’s.

‘Great cheek bones. Any girl would kill for them. Clear blue eyes. Good, good. Remove the hat.’ I pulled off my beanie. ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘hair like a Botticelli cherub.’

‘Gimme that.’ I grabbed the hat and shoved it back on.

‘Why have those beautiful curls if you’re going to hide them, boy?’

I shrugged. ‘Don’t want to look like all the other fellas.’

‘Ah, a maverick. Perfect.’ She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes; I stared back. Somewhere in her face there was a smile but it didn’t curve through her lips. ‘To the studio,’ she said, twisting me around to face the back door.

Her studio was a massive shed in the garden; it smelt sweet inside, like a furniture shop, and it was warm. Magda told me to sit and she clipped paper to an easel. I wiggled in the seat, stretching my legs, and pulling my hands in and out of my lap. She stood, in her dirty apron, as though she was straddling an invisible horse; her hair flopped over her shoulder like a mane. I was mortified, her eyes kept landing on me; I fidgeted and looked at the floor, the walls, the ceiling. I wondered why snobs always wore such hickey clothes, like they couldn’t afford proper stuff.

‘Keep still, Jackson. Please.’

Her pencil scratched across the page and she looked at me, then back at the sketch; I was getting bored.

‘A masterpiece, Magda, is it?’ I said.

‘You betcha.’

Flick-flick with her eyes; scratch-scratch with the pencil. My body wouldn’t calm down; I wanted to chill, let my thoughts go blank like in school, but it wouldn’t happen. I looked around at the paintings that were hung on the walls. They were the kind of things Christopher brings our class to look at in art galleries in town; they looked like a mentler had done them. But some of them were OK – you could see people and buildings in the jumble of paint. There were a few paintings where nobody had any clothes on; I stared at them, then turned away, but my eyes were dragged back again. The canvases were lumpy with paint, but the people’s skin – the women’s boobs and all – looked soft and alive. I wondered how Magda had done that.

She was watching me. I eye-balled her. ‘You needn’t think I’m going to strip.’

Magda frowned and sucked her pencil; I knew the soggy wooden taste it’d leave on her tongue, the paint chips that’d stick to her teeth. I wanted to take it out of her mouth.

‘What exactly did Christopher tell you about coming here, Jackson?’

‘That you were doing some big, important painting and you needed a young fella to model. That you’d pay me.’

‘Did he mention nudity at all?’

I scuffed the floor with my runner. ‘No.’

‘So, he didn’t explain the tableau I’m working on?’ I shook my head and she sighed. ‘My nephew is lackadaisical in everything he does, says and is.’

‘Is that the same as “laxadaisy”? That’s what my Da calls me.’ I snorted. ‘Well, one of the things.’

‘Yes, the very same.’ Magda pulled over a chair and sat; she kept her mouth open, and I could see spit-bubbles like spills of milk on her tongue. Normally that kind of stuff makes me feel sick, you know, other people’s gobs and ear-wax and snot and stuff. But, even though she was an auld dear, there was – and is – something fresh about Magda, something kinda pure. ‘Do you know your Bible, Jackson?’ she said.

I jumped up. ‘I fucken knew you were a Holy Joe.’

‘Sit.’ I sat. ‘I already told you that’s not the case; listen to me for a minute.’

She took my hands; I hate anyone touching my skin, but I let her hold on to me, if that was what she wanted.

‘Go for it,’ I said.

‘In Saint Luke’s Gospel it says that Jesus went to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem every year with his parents. But, when he was twelve, instead of returning to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, he stayed behind. On the way home, they realised he was missing and it took them days to find him; he was in a temple in Jerusalem. Of course, they’d been frantic, and they were annoyed with him but, when Mary gave out, Jesus said: “Why were you so worried? Didn’t you know I’d be in my Father’s house?”’

‘So?’

‘So, I love the idea of Jesus as blasé teenager and divinity in one.’ Magda smiled.

‘Div-what?’

‘Divinity. A divine being. A God. Anyway, this tableau I’m painting is of Jesus in the temple, talking to the priests. But, I want to represent Jesus naked, to show his power but, at the same time, his innocence.’

‘Jesus in the nude? With priests? He’d better watch out.’ I laughed but Magda didn’t; she squeezed my hands and made a question with her eyes. ‘If I do it,’ I said, ‘you’re not to let on. Not even to Christopher. If that gock tells the other teachers, next thing it’ll be all over the school, and I might as well kill myself.’

Magda tossed her hair back and laughed; I could see her fillings like a pile of black full-stops along her teeth. She brought my hands to her mouth, kissed my fingers, and said, ‘Thank you’.

The first morning of posing started kind of poxy; Magda was narked with me because I came late to Jerusalem. I’d had a fight with my auld fella and slept half the night on a street-bench, freezing my nuts off. I spent the morning in Abrakebabra, drinking tea to warm up.

‘It’s half past ten,’ she said, blocking the way into her house.

‘Yeah?’

‘If you plan to be a smart bollox, Jackson, you can shag off now.’

‘Language, Magda.’ I grinned.

‘Go!’ she shouted, and I knew she was real pissed off, so I stopped acting the maggot, and said I’d never be late again. A day with her had to be miles better than going home to my Da and his nutsy mood. She blinked, then stepped back to let me in.

I got used to being in the nip. I mean, I hated it at first and I was totally scarlet, but Magda didn’t care whether you were in clothes or out of them.

‘Artists are like doctors, where the human body is concerned,’ she said. ‘Bare flesh is just part of the working day.’

Still, I undressed behind a screen, then peeped around, and she called me out with one crooked finger; I shuffled into the middle of the room with my hands over my bits. Magda put me standing where she wanted me and pulled my arms to my sides; I felt a jump in my balls but then everything settled.

‘Now, Jackson, pretend I’m not here. Think about something else, put your mind in another zone,’ she said, going to her easel. ‘Relax.’

The problem is, when someone tells me to relax, I coil real tight. When a nurse or someone like that says to take deep breaths, I start choking and my mind jumps from seizures, to bleeding to death, to my funeral. But it was going to be a long day and I needed the money; and I wanted to do things right for Magda. I forced myself to hang looser and slow down my thinking. After a while, I went into some numb, far-away place where I couldn’t feel my skin or bones as part of myself anymore; and it felt good.

My Da said I made him sick. He had the light on and he stood over my bed, calling me a queer-boy and a lezzie-lover. I squinted at him, half-in-half-out of a dream where I was riding a Harley across America, all free and easy; I wanted to deck him for taking me out of there.

‘Stripping off at the drop of a hat. You’re a homo, Jackie, I always knew it.’ He was minging of drink, falling round the place, and waggling a fist at me. He’d heard about the painting; I don’t know how, but he had. ‘You’re a weirdo. Like all the fucken Noonans.’

 ‘Shut up about the Noonans.’ I hated when he slagged my Ma’s family.

‘Shut up about the Noonans.’ He copied my voice, squeaking it through his teeth. ‘All those Noonans are too big for their boots and them with not a pot to piss in. And that includes your precious Ma.’ He stood there with spits hanging from his mouth, his face beetroot. ‘Where’s your lovely Ma now, Jackie, what? Fucked off with herself, didn’t she?’ He whacked my leg through the quilt and shouted. ‘Didn’t she?’

‘You’re bleeding mad.’ I jumped out of bed and tried to get past him.

‘Come back here, you,’ he roared. He caught my hair, dragged me down and shoved my face into the bed. ‘Makin’ a fucken fool of me, you bastard.’ He pinched his fingers into my neck and pushed my face into the quilt. ‘Dancin’ round in your pelt so some hippy-bitch can get her jollies. Have you lost the plot?’

I could hardly breath but I reefed away from him and fell backwards; I hopped up.

‘You’re a cunt, Da, and no one likes you. Not your drinking buddies, not my Ma, not me. Not anyone.’

I pucked him hard and he toppled; his arms waved like someone falling off a building. His arse hit the carpet with a flump. Next thing he bends forward and starts to bawl; I stood over him, watching snot bubble from his nose and tears fall onto his chest. I put my hand out but he smacked it away; he was blubbing like an overgrown baby. I’m fucked if I didn’t feel sorry for him.

‘Da? Jaysus, Da, come on.’

‘Get out, Jackie,’ he sobbed, ‘get out. I’m ashamed to call you my son.’

The painting was getting there. Every one of the priests was really Christopher in a different pose: him with a beard, him with long hair, him with a hat or a turban. Your average person wouldn’t notice that it was all the one man, but I knew, and I liked knowing.

Magda did different versions of me too: back-views, side-views, full-frontals. They were deadly – I looked like me, but not like myself, if you know what I mean. I was real proud of the painting and it was a good buzz, being at Magda’s, eating her weird cheese and stuff, and drinking coffee and yapping.

‘OK, Jackson, I’m ready to put Jesus in; I need to find the perfect pose,’ she said, one morning, and asked me to help her choose it. We lined up her oil sketches.

‘This sideways one is good, you can see my face,’ I said. She shook her head. ‘What about from the back?’        

‘No. The exact opposite, I think.’ Magda chawed her paintbrush and I pulled it from her mouth.

‘You’ll wreck your teeth.’

She ruffed my hair and smiled; her hand landed on my shoulder. She lifted my hair and looked at my neck. The bruises from my Da were still there, like a tattooed necklace of finger-shaped beads. Magda looked at me.

‘Do you want to tell me anything?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s just my Da,’ I said.

She put her arm around me and hugged me into her side and, with her skin light on my skin, we chose the best position for Jesus in the temple.

How was I supposed to know that Magda Bolding was famous? I’d never heard of her. And by the state of her clothes and gaff, I’d never have guessed either. Christopher didn’t say his auntie was Mrs Modern Irish Art, but he never said much, in fairness. At school, he’d go into his cubby in the art room to smoke, while we painted still-lifes of rotten apples. And how was I to know, either, that Magda’s Jesus in the Temple would end up on the telly, bonging out the Angelus, with my micky hanging out for all the world to gawk at?

As for my Da, well, he thought it was great gas.

‘Here, Jesus,’ he’d squawk, ‘turn that water into wine, like a good man’.

‘You fucken wish,’ I’d say, and he’d ball his fist at me.

‘Wine is piss,’ he’d say then, and, ‘I suppose you’re off to Jerusalem today’. Ha-ha-ha.

The night Magda and me went on The Late Late Show, he made all his buddies in Maguire’s watch it. Mr Maguire told me my Da went mad if anyone clinked a glass while Pat Kenny was yakking to Magda and me about the making of the painting. My Da would never have told me himself that he even watched it, never mind making his pals watch. We were still sparring, but Da was a bit wary of me. I might’ve thought it was a kind of respect because I was doing something new, something he wouldn’t have had the balls to do, but he was still the same mouthy, antsy arsehole. Everything was all fun and laughs until he decided it wasn’t again.

Anyway, whether I knew Magda was mad famous or not, I still think I would have posed for her. She’s a bit of a hippy – I knew that the minute I saw her – but she’s the kind of auld bird who makes you feel like the most important person in the world when you’re with her. That’s one of the real gifts she has: making everyone feel important; as important as herself.