One Hundred Views of NW3 by Pat Jourdan
Arriving
in London with £5, Stella rapidly begins hopping from one disastrous
job, bedsit and boyfriend to another. All the time she is trying to
paint pictures and write poetry. At last she gets a place in
Hampstead but various men distract her from reaching the goal of
holding an exhibition. An ever-changing group of friends moves her
along from place to place. After each drawback Stela moves on,
disaster after disaster, while the tally of of pictures shrinks to
36. Set in the heady days of 1960s Swinging London, this vividly
charts one girl's track through the untidy years at its height.
One
Hundred Views of NW3 Pat Jourdan
Stella
has begun to take part in a local exhibition, and is so confident
that she happily gives the money to Lloyd, a past boyfriend. He
suggests repayment via her coming to dinner on Sundays to settle the
debt of £12. But there is a major snag as the last course of the
meal.
Collecting
the post, she opened the envelope while going up Pond Street to work,
and here was Lloyd walking down towards her. He started doing a
fancy cake-walk, all across the pavement like a professional show
dancer. In the envelope was a cheque for one of her paintings sold
in the Hampstead Artists’ Council Exhibition that month. Their Open
Air show was held further up Heath Street over the past three summer
weekends. It had been inspired by an item in the Ham & High about
someone drowning themselves in the ponds earlier that summer. Titled
‘Night,
Grass, Ponds’
it had a glamour and a mystery, melancholy beauty.
Last
year, the first year of exhibiting with them, a swirling Summer
Greens
was bought for £10 by a Mr Green. So this year was an obvious
improvement. This time the original price before commission was
£15.This was what success looked like, or its beginning.
“Darlin’,”
Lloyd said, with his usual self-mockery. “I was just coming to see
you!” He did a dance step or two right there, nifty footwork on the
morning pavement.
“At
this time? But I’m off to work.”
“Well,
it’s a bit of a problem, that’s why I got here so early, to find
you, you see, we absolutely need the rent, it’s already overdue.
It’s sort of an emergency. Well, actually it’s a very major
emergency.”
“You
are so
lucky, I’ve just sold a painting! Got a cheque here for £12! What
a surprise” and in the merriment of the moment and all the success
it symbolised, Stella endorsed the cheque right there in the street,
leaning against the wall of the Indian house. She gave it to Lloyd
happily. This is what the bohemian life was like, success was getting
closer. She also had a painting ‘Black Rose’ accepted for show
with the Free Painters Group later that year. He looked serious for a
second.
“You
do realise I won’t be able to pay this back, don’t you? But what
we can do, what you can do, is to come round each Sunday for dinner
with Netta and me until you think you’ve eaten about twelve quids’
worth. That should sort it. I’ve just started work, it’s a
problem with the wages, got to work a fortnight in hand, that’s why
we’ve got no money.” His girlfriend, Netta did not seem to work
these days so was no help. Her family lived over in Dalston, rather a
mystery.
“Work?”
Fiona said, “He’s a milkman! You can see him driving that milk
float all around the roads waving at everyone and grinning like a
film star!” And just as she said this, Stella did encounter him a
day or two later, with his rattling cargo of milk, orange juice and
heaps of potatoes and other groceries progressing along South End
Green towards Keats Grove. Suddenly he was everywhere, cropping up
unexpectedly.
So,
on Sunday lunchtime, Stella decided to explore what the possibilities
would be. Lloyd and Netta had the entire top floor flat in a
professor’s house on Rosslyn Hill. The tasty warm smell of roast
chicken was already spreading down from their landing door as Lloyd
ushered her up to their flat.
And
it was definitely a real slap-up meal. She was surprised. Lloyd and
Netta had provided a genuine classic Sunday dinner. Roast Chicken,
roast potatoes, stuffing, and veg, followed by tinned peaches and
real double cream followed by tea or coffee.
“Oh,
this costs us nothing,” Lloyd said contentedly, “There’s all
these filthy rich people with monthly accounts or even longer
accounts that they don’t bother to pay for six months and then they
go off abroad for ages, so you put something extra on their bill and
they never question it, they haven’t a clue what’s going on. And
even if they did query it, I’ve got extra receipt books to come up
with something different.” He smiled happily, a successful
businessman.
The
third course was cannabis, as Lloyd was also Hampstead’s pet
cannabis dealer. His life was perfect these days. Stella did not like
to refuse; you had to pretend to be cool sometimes. The one fat roach
was passed round slowly as they each took in its contents. And quite
quickly it had results. The carpet moved upwards and substances
became fluid, the furniture started to float. As usual to sober up,
Stella made for the sink and started to do the washing up. It was
what she did at parties to sober up, it was always both soothing and
practical.
But
the floor tilted from side to side and some tree branches from the
garden came in through the panes of glass and spread across the
carpet, making navigation difficult. Her feet went down further and
further into compressed air. The dishes were like seashells
underwater and although obviously they were solid in real life, now
they shifted and slithered as if alive. The sink was an ocean and the
dishes folded into each other. Looking at them she could hear colours
too.
Pat Jourdan
trained as a painter at Liverpool College of Art -some of her
paintings can be seen on Saatchi.com. Always balancing writing with
painting, she has won the Molly Keane Short Story Award, second in
the Michael McLaverty Short Story Award, and various other prizes.
One Hundred Views of NW3 is her fourth novel.
“ I am used to
producing a painting from start to finish and self-publishing gives
the same creative possibility. It has the same excitement, the change
from private to public.”
