If you are travelling to Litherland from Liverpool city centre along Linacre Road, you will pass under a railway bridge; on the right-hand side there is a bus depot and opposite, just past the Palladium Cinema, is Langton Road leading down the hill to Seaforth, beyond which you may be lucky enough to spot a ship moving slowly out to sea. A hundred yards down you will see a sign saying ‘Litherland Boxing Club’ and on the top floor of the building you’ll find an artist’s studio. You’re welcome to come in and have a look around.
I would have been eighteen or nineteen, and when home from university would go to various dance halls with my mates. The big ones in town like the Locarno and the Grafton were intimidating and a bit rough for us fey students, so we favoured venues like the Moulin Rouge in upmarket Birkdale. It was on the dance floor there that I met the girl who was to become my Giaconda, my Venus, my Aphrodite, my own, my very own, nude.
During a slow foxtrot she asked me what I did for a living. The trick, of course, was never to tell the truth. ‘I’m a student,’ would not be the velvet key to a fumble in the car park later. Student equals no money, no car, no chance. So I would ring the changes. ‘Soldier on leave’. ‘Plumber’. ‘Airline pilot’. ‘Journalist’. ‘Hair stylist’. Whatever my reply, the girl would invariably snort, ‘Liar, yer a student.’ This time, however, because my new pal Norris really was an artist and knowing that I was keen to hone my painterly skills, had offered me the use of his studio, I said modestly, ‘I’m an artist.’
‘An artist?’
‘Yes, I paint. I’ve got my own studio.’
‘What do you paint?’
‘Oh, the usual. Still life. Flowers.’
‘Naked ladies?’
‘Sometimes.’ (Lies! Lies!)
‘Would you like me to pose for you?’
Let me make it clear right away that Barbara was no scrubber, but a well-spoken middle-class girl from Formby.
‘Do you mean without any clothes on?’
Suddenly the foxtrot had turned into a pack of hounds galloping in hot pursuit of something hairy and inedible.
‘Yes please!’
We had arranged the sitting for 2 p.m. the following Saturday afternoon. Enough time for a few thumb-nail squiggles, hot sex and then church in time for confession at 6.30. I let myself into the studio just after midday, having first checked with Norris that he would stay away. I fluffed up the brushes in the jam jar to create a surreal flower arrangement, then hung his best unsigned painting on the easel, the canvas I would be working on when Barbara arrived. If Barbara arrived, that is (surely she’d have more sense than to trek across town on a wet Saturday afternoon to take her clothes off for a second-year geography student? I mean, artist). It was January. It was dark and it was cold. I switched on the only heating, a one-bar electric fire, uncorked the flagon of Hirondelle white wine (at least that was warm) and sat listening to the cream of Litherland youth beating shit out of each other two floors below.
Barbara eventually did arrive and, to her credit, modestly undressed; then, with rather less modesty, posed naked. In the nude. To my credit I didn’t make a pass at her. On the debit side, I hadn’t brought along a sketchbook, assuming that there would be one of Norris’s lying around, so my lightning charcoal sketches were made on wrapping paper and on the backs of boxing-match posters. The poor girl kept shivering and I was struck dumb at the sight of her unbridled goose bumps. After twenty minutes or so she asked to see how I was doing. The bold iconography of my work puzzled her (although not as much as it puzzled me).
‘It’s charcoal,’ I explained.
‘It’s certainly not me,’ she said.
‘Just preliminary sketches before I begin painting in oils,’ I proffered, watching her get dressed. ‘Would you like a glass of wine? It’s what artists drink.’
It was still raining as I walked her to the bus stop.