Page 115 of The Examiner

I wondered whether Jonathan’s dad would be there, given his age and health, but when I heard the unmistakable raspy drone of an elderly man speaking about a planned extension to the main building, I knew it was him. I wanted to follow the voice down a corridor off the foyer, but ‘Barbara’, who turned out to be the assistant manager, stood in our path and asked if we wanted to be shown around the exhibition.

I said yes. Dad sighed. But this was my chance to find out if everything Jonathan has told us about himself is true. I’ll just have to make something up to keep Dad happy later. So Barbara leads us through the rooms, which have a crisper, cleaner feel than the foyer. Any soundscape here would need to be softer and less intrusive, perhaps water or distant birds, although my plan would be to switch up the soundscape relative to the exhibition. This one is by local artists over the age of sixty, so I’d loop some gentle Boomer music into the mix. Barbara tries to take us round every exhibit, explaining each nuance in detail, until I tell her I’m only really interested in sculpture. Dad sighs again, but this time with relief, because there are far fewer of those than paintings.

That’s when Barbara gets really excited because they have some ‘amazing’ 3D work she can show me, and she was right. I was blown away by a series of clay death masks – not real ones, she was quick to say – but imagined death masks of the five senses: touch, hearing, smell, taste and sight. Each was subtly nuanced, very well conceived and executed. Then there was a towering piece, as tall as I am, shaped like a Grecian urn, she said, but tapering at the top and fired to such a cold, smooth finish that when my fingertips touched it, a freezing shiver went right through me. We have a long chat about texture and, luckily, Barbara starts to warm up. I’m waiting for the right moment.

Meanwhile Dad’s footsteps scrape behind me like he’s being taken to the vet. But he never moves far away, so I have to be careful how I phrase my key questions. Finally I manage to say, casually, ‘How is Mr Danners senior? I heard he was unwell.’

He doesn’t have to speak, I can tell Dad is wondering how I know anything at all about a stranger in a town I’ve never been to in my life.

‘He’s much better – more so than ever,’ the lady chirps. ‘Do you know Goff then? He’s in today.’

‘No, please don’t bother him.’ The last thing I want is Jonathan hearing from his dad that a Bengali girl dropped by with her dad – he’d know immediately it was me. ‘I read about the gallery in a blog. Apparently his son took over for a few years.’

There was something about the way she paused. ‘Jonathan? Well, he was around a bit more,’ the woman says, an edge of frostiness in her tone as a cold stew of office politics stirred under her words, ‘but I took over management and curating. I’ve been here seventeen years, so it was the most seamless way.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I thought Jonathan did, seeing as his mother and sister had already died.’ It felt clumsy, even to me …

‘Yes, it’s been a very sad time.’ She sighed. ‘But Goff didn’t want this place to be Jonathan’s responsibility, not when there’s a team of us to keep it running.’

So at least that part of Jonathan’s sob story is true, even if he exaggerated his role in managing this place. I was deflated. But what had I expected? Something that might explain things. Lies to stop us asking questions. There were times I thought there might be no Danners Gallery in Gloucester, until a quick google revealed there was. Then I wondered if Jonathan had made up a past because he’d been in prison perhaps, or was an addict, into drugs or gambling. It’d all gone through my head to try and explain why the more I got to know him, the less I trusted him. Why, after that trip to Somerset, Alyson never came back to Royal Hastings.

We arrived at another sculpture, this one a cube covered in fine spikes. I ran my fingers over the bristly bits. Barbara ran her fingers over the bristles too and giggled as they pinged.

Ding! Dad gets a text and moves away to check his phone. This is my last chance to shake the tree, as Nani says, whenever I question why she does something trite and pointless.

‘But Jonathan wants to be an artist. I’d have thought running his own gallery is a good place to be, if you want to make and show your own work.’

Barbara’s fingers stop mid-bristle. She removes her hands from the sculpture and inhales sharply.

‘Jonathan isn’t an artist.’

‘He’s not particularly skilled, but he’s doing an MA in multimedia at Royal Hastings, seeing as he missed out on doing a Bachelor’s at the usual time.’

‘Well, he must be changing career then. I’ve known the family longer than that and he’s never been remotely interested in art or the gallery.’ She stops herself, as if she doesn’t want to trash-talk her boss’s son, and starts to walk away.

I followed her to the next sculpture. ‘He had to look after it, in the ten years since his mum and sister died. Perhaps he got a taste for it over time.’

‘Which blog did you read all this on?’ Barbara hesitates and lowers her voice. ‘Margaret and Sophia died two years ago. Jonathan didn’t miss out on college. He did his Bachelor’s at Imperial, well over a decade ago. That’s where he met Suzie …’

‘Suzie?’

‘His wife, Suzie. They’ve been married, oh, at least ten years.’

I didn’t have to fake my surprise. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘you can’t trust what you read on the internet. What job does he do then?’

‘I don’t know. Something ecological.’ There’s a note of suspicion in her voice by now – she firmly changes the subject to the next sculpture, a cage with a football inside it. You reach in and try to move the ball around. She told me who the artist was, but my mind was racing so fast I instantly forgot it.

Something ecological.

Royal Hastings, University of London Multimedia Art MA *Final Project*

Candidate name: Patrick Bright

Candidate number: 0883480

Where it went right:

When the delegation from RD8 descended on us in the studio it was like a murder of crows alighting on a newly sown field. They were everywhere. Picking things up, touching things, opening doors and drawers. But their reaction to the installation was something I wasn’t prepared for. And bear in mind at this point it looked in a sorry state. The tunnel was merely a length of fabric stretched across the room, folded and splayed out for us to glue the components on, while the head was a large wire frame only just starting to take shape with clay on a papier-mâché base. Yet you could tell these boffin types were captivated. Impressed by a world they knew nothing about (because if they had known, they wouldn’t have been impressed at all). Still, I felt proud of the work.