Testament, p.18
Testament, page 18
‘I should hope so, I don’t tend to paint total strangers.’
In the years that had followed, Catz had gone on from ‘making a splash’ to being described by one broadsheet art critic as ‘the saviour of modern British figurative painting’. Her stock was high and the prices commanded by her work higher still. But that success, Damia reflected now, had not mitigated Catz’s emotional insecurity. It had simply opened up an ever-widening gulf between her feted, successful public persona and the strained, conflicted, private reality.
Twenty-seven
Salster, late summer 1388
Although, ever since Toby’s birth, it had been Gwyneth’s devout wish that Simon would pay him some fatherly attention, she found her husband’s sudden, overwhelming interest in their child to be wearing. Simon’s hardness of heart had caused her long anguish but she had never had to share Toby as she did now and she found, whatever her joy, that it came hard. She was constantly having to bite her tongue as Simon handled the child clumsily, or did things in a cack-handed, distressing way.
At first, Toby seemed bewildered by Simon’s unwonted attentiveness, rolling his uncovered eye at Gwyneth and mewing for her. It tore at Gwyneth’s heart: all her protective instincts, honed and sharpened for the three and a half years of her child’s life, insisted that she should wrest him from Simon’s grasp and hold him to her. But she knew she must not. She had wanted Simon to own him, and now she must bide her time as Simon accustomed himself to Toby.
But if she had thought that Simon would learn to do things exactly as she did, Gwyneth soon knew better. For Simon had his own notions as to how their boy should be handled and taught. However harshly he had expressed his opinions as to her treatment of Tobias in the past, they had, it seemed, been his true feelings, born of an unease at Gwyneth’s overprotection.
‘Why do you carry him like that?’ Gwyneth could not help herself asking one day as Simon hoisted Toby on to his hip, his forearm under the boy’s bent knees as Toby tried to look out at the world. ‘He cannot hold up his head to see.’
‘Not all the time,’ Simon agreed, ‘but he and I together have found that if I hold him so, with his legs bent, he can pay attention to what he does with his shoulders and head.’ He craned around to look at Toby and, with a visible effort, the child raised his head. As he did so, Simon surprised Gwyneth by swiftly bringing his other arm around Toby’s body to control his outflinging arms. They looked at each other, father and son, Toby’s face writhing uncontrollably as he tried to articulate sounds, and then Simon gently released the child’s arms and put his hand on Toby’s forehead, supporting it lest his head drop forward again.
‘You see, Gwyneth,’ he said, as if he was explaining some architectural principle to her, ‘because he cannot control his whole body at once, you have always carried him so that he did not need to work to control any part of himself. So he has remained as he is…’ Gwyneth chewed her lip, but said nothing, watching Toby carefully. ‘But we shall see whether he can learn mastery of one part if another is taken care of.’ He swung Toby around so that the child was held against his chest, looking outwards. He gently pushed the boy’s head back so that it was resting against him and then took his hand away. ‘See?’ he asked Gwyneth. ‘I may be his frame for him.’
The frame. Simon still could hardly bear to see Toby in it, and preferred, when he had his son with him, to carry him about.
But Gwyneth stood firm, and when she went to pay the weekly wages to masons on the college site Toby no longer lay on his pallet at her feet but moved laboriously about the lodge in his frame, his unpractised hands reaching for things while his eyes rolled in his restrained head, his face writhing uncontrollably in his ecstatic delight at such new freedom. Seeing his first attempts at grasping things fail as his over-eager arms flung themselves outwards, Gwyneth had added to the frame two small hoops placed upright in front of Toby. Restrained by these loops, his arms were prevented from flight and his hands were able to begin the long process of learning to reach, grasp, hold and turn things so that he could see them.
Determined that his son should see better, Simon had abandoned the bandage with which Gwyneth had covered Toby’s more wandering eye and made him a leather patch on a thong which fitted snugly into his eye-socket and did not slip about, as the bandage had often done.
And so, with a patch on his eye, and the new clothes that Simon had asked Alysoun to make for him hiding the scrawniness of his under-exercised body, Toby was carried on to the building site, his existence openly acknowledged by his father for the first time.
Gwyneth knew what it cost Simon to hoist Toby on to his hip and walk with him amongst other masons. She knew how he would hate the pity, the fear, the superstitious warding of the evil eye. She knew how much it cost him to walk amongst men who had their growing sons working alongside them, his own crippled boy on his arm.
And yet Simon did it. Whether as penance or sudden, late-flowering affection for the child, Simon became Toby’s father overnight, as he had failed to do when the boy was born; and being in the world with his father seemed to bring Toby on in a way that his mother’s protective love and care had not.
It rankled with Gwyneth, whatever her joy at Toby’s new life. And yet she had not lost him to his father altogether. It became obvious to her that the one thing she could do for Toby which Simon could not was to give him the chance to walk. For all his father’s ministrations, Toby’s legs would not support his weight, and the more Simon held him beneath the arms and braced him as he tried, the harder Toby found it.
‘He cannot bear to disappoint you,’ Gwyneth said one day, her son’s distress suddenly dawning on her. ‘He knows you dearly want him to walk, and he wants to give it to you — but he cannot. And the more anxious he is, the more he cannot.’
And, though he was not a man to relish admitting defeat, Simon was forced to concede that this was true. There were many things that Toby learned over the next twelve months: during the long lay-off of winter; during the reawakening of the spring; during the summer when, again, the walls of Daker’s college began to rise. While great things were afoot in matters of state as the young king took the reins of power from his Lords Appellant, and smaller, though significant things were happening in his own city, Tobias Kineton learned to sit against a wall and not fall over, to push himself along on his back with braced legs and to look his father in the eye. These might be things that most children mastered well before their first year was out but they were minor miracles of perseverance for Toby and things which his mother had never thought to see him do.
But walking still remained beyond him — for that, he needed his frame.
Twenty-eight
From: Damia.Miller@kdc.sal.ac.uk
To: Toby Alumni
Subject: Toby Fairings Team
Dear Tobyite
Whether you’re an athlete or not, whether you ever ran in the Fairings or not, you’re likely to have very fond memories of Fairings Day: Gathering in the Great Hall to watch the ceremonial presentation of rigs to runners, cheering the team on the Octo’s steps, following the race on foot or heading straight to St Thomas’s through the cheering crowds for that final dash; not to mention hosting friends and family at a traditional Salster summer event.
For many at Salster the Fairings is the high point of every year. For finalists it marks the end of their studies at Salster and the beginning of the gruelling round of exams that will allow them to write ‘BA Sals.’ after their name.
As you may well have read in the national media recently, Toby’s sponsors for this year’s Fairings, the sporting goods manufacturers Atoz, have been rejected by our runners who expressed grave concerns over Atoz’s human rights and ethical trading record [click here for more information].
As a consequence, Sir Ian Baird, Principal of our associate college, Northgate, has seceded from association and is running an independent Northgate team for the first time in the college’s history.
No longer having Atoz as our sponsor has left us with significant problems. Financial backing is needed not only to cover the costs of training gear, running rigs, coaching and hospitality to alumni and their guests on race day; these costs, though significant to the runners, are minor in the scheme of college finances. But with ever-increasing pressure on higher education funding, Fairings sponsorship has become a more and more significant item on each year’s balance sheet.
By now, you will not be surprised to read the words THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN!
Toby is asking you — its worldwide members — to back our runners as this year’s sponsors. To stand alongside the young people who took such a principled stance over the rights of workers whom they will never meet. To say ‘We are proud of you and we will support you.’
Backing our runners will also send a very clear message of support to our Regent Master, Edmund Norris. If you value the spirit of democracy and self-determination which has always prevailed at Toby and which Ed Norris supports even when his reputation and future are on the line, I know you will want to stand alongside him and offer your wholehearted endorsement of his leadership.
Please, support our runners and volunteer your sponsorship.
Finally, because we are aware that all our members are of very different means, we do not intend to offer a sliding scale of rewards for your generosity. An invitation-only champagne reception on race day will be open to every donor, be their donation large or small.
So, click here to if you’d like to register as a sponsor and ensure that Fairings Day next year sees a Toby team in good heart, supported by its own.
Whether you decide to become a sponsor or not, if you wish to show your support for our runners in a very visible way on race day click here to see the range of Toby Fairings Day merchandise. Each item carries our specially designed logo representing the message BY, FOR AND WITH TOBY! This logo was designed by Stephan Kingsley, a third-year classicist here at Toby, and is his donation to the cause.
Kind regards
Damia Miller
Marketing Manager
Damia sat back and looked at the claret-and-navy T-shirt on her desk. Stephan Kingsley’s cryptic logo:
x4&ċ
TOBY
was designed to looked equally eye-catching on T-shirts, umbrellas (Fairings Day was not always seasonally sunny) and sweatshirts.
The self-sponsorship plan was one of the first public steps taken by the College Action Plan Committee, a group appointed by the governing body and immediately rechristened the CAP Committee.
Though Edmund Norris’s surprising endorsement of Northgate’s plans for secession had drawn the force from Ian Baird’s full-frontal attack, in the wake of Baird’s departure from the governing body meeting an uncomfortable number of voices had been raised, questioning whether this might be the time for Kineton and Dacre College to move forward proactively instead of waiting for the inevitable; to throw the weight of their tradition behind a new, twenty-first-century breed of hybrid college.
‘It’s the way colleges are going to have to go in the current financial climate,’ Charles Northrop had insisted. ‘We may as well get in now and reap the early-bird benefits.’
The majority of the governing body, however, had been against such a course, preferring to maintain Toby’s independence and find another way forward. This was the CAP Committee’s remit.
But, despite the presence of Rob Hadstowe as the tenants’ representative at the committee’s inaugural meeting, the rent strike dragged on. Hadstowe had remained unmoved by the concept of a college community coming together in a collaboration unique in the history of Salster, and made no further promises than to report on the substance of the meeting to his colleagues.
A similar lack of enthusiasm had come from the dean, Charles Northrop.
‘I know he’s the dean,’ Damia had complained to Norris before the inaugural meeting, ‘but does he have to be on the committee?’
Norris had regarded her gravely. ‘Not to invite him to be part of it would be tantamount to saying that I don’t trust him.’
‘Well, do you trust him?’
Norris had sighed and turned, in an habitual gesture, to look out of his office window. The building that Damia was learning to call the Octo seemed more than usually massive as it rose out of the gloom of a January dusk.
‘I’m not sure I trust him to strain every sinew on Toby’s behalf, no,’ he admitted. ‘I think he already fancies himself as dean of this combined college. NKD…’ His voice had faded so much as he pronounced the last three syllables that Damia could not tell whether his words were scathing or despairing.
But it was not simply Northrop’s preference for a merger with Northgate that put him at odds with Damia — antagonism had flared between them as early as her interview for the marketing job.
‘Your previous jobs seem to have had a greater emphasis on fundraising than on marketing,’ he had observed after her presentation on ‘Marketing Kineton and Dacre College in the Twenty-first Century’. ‘How well do you think fundraising for the homeless will map on to marketing us as a top-flight educational establishment in a world market?’
‘The most effective marketing is always done by word of mouth — that’s what viral marketing is trying to emulate in the global village,’ she responded, engaging him on his chosen international ground. ‘And word of mouth works best when you’ve created a really strong brand and a community that identifies with that brand. I would want to identify the stakeholders in the Toby brand —’ she had caught a few exchanged glances at her deliberate use of the initiates’ name for the college — ‘and develop their sense of identity with it. Then marketing’s half done and so is fundraising. Those who identify with the community will support it. We need brand loyalty. The more we can persuade people that they belong and that they count, the more loyal they will be.’
‘That sounds very nice in theory, but in practice I think you may find we’re fundraised out — that brand loyalty is suffering fatigue after our appeal —’
‘Ah well, if you’ll let me interrupt, this is where I think there’s a huge difference between developing loyalty and tapping people for money on a one-off. Loyalty is all about give and take. My research into your appeal shows that all donors got was an honourable mention in the college magazine. That’s not donor development. I hate to criticise fellow professionals but I do think your fundraising consultants dropped the ball there.’
The short but glance-filled silence that followed was swiftly curtailed by a question from another interviewer; only later did Damia learn that there had been no consultants. Charles Northrop had coordinated the college appeal.
Northrop’s challenge to her at the CAP Committee’s first meeting had been swift. The introductions were barely complete when he raised a point of order.
‘Just on the composition of this committee, Regent Master,’ he said, as if wearied by the mere fact of having to raise an obvious point. ‘Is it really necessary that Ms Miller sits on this committee? Has she not already put into effect all her own ideas in her marketing capacity? It seems to me that while Ms Miller beavers away, this committee needs to adopt a very different approach. Perhaps we should vote on the committee’s constitution?’
Those not used to working with Northrop as an equal looked down at their notepads and avoided eye contact. The dean’s disciplinary reputation was as a steamroller of self-defence; miscreants prepared to profess abject repentance were generally regarded as wise.
The academics on the committee exchanged glances and rolled despairing eyes.
Damia, about to launch a robust defence of her role with facts and figures as to the success of her ‘beavering’ thus far, was pre-empted by Edmund Norris.
‘Charles, everybody at this table is here at my personal invitation. This is not an officially constituted committee, demanded by college constitution. It can be disbanded, enlarged or shrunk at my whim.’ A faint smile played in the crow’s feet around Norris’s eyes but his lips remained unamused. ‘If you feel you cannot work successfully with Damia and her approach, then you are free to withdraw your services. Personally, I would be sad were that to happen as I think your different contributions would both be valuable, but please, don’t feel constrained to stay if you feel uncomfortable.’
Northrop, from his seat at the end of the table opposite Ed Norris, glared at him. But he stayed.
Twenty-nine
Salster, summer 1389
The summer of that year proved just as chancy as many before it, and dull days frequently turned to rain. Again and again, building was suspended lest the mortar wash out and the stones themselves begin to take in water, which would weaken them.
Simon’s patience was rubbed very thin by such constant interruptions and his masons began to avoid him.
Great quantities of stone were dressed in the shelter of the lodge and laid up ready to be set in place, but the setters, frustrated by rain, could make no inroads into the piles of precisely cut and marked blocks that rose every day. Ill-tempered with unreliable employment and the half-pay that was the Salster lodges’ agreed retainer for days on which less than four hours’ work was done, the setters saw no reason why they should not do the cutting work of hewers. Several tried, under the regulations for freemasonry drawn up the previous summer, to find masters who would take them on for day-labour, but none succeeded, hewers always having considered themselves to be the more skilled of the two crafts.
Resentments began to build which Simon, caught in the coils of his own desperation, did not exert himself to mediate. Several days saw blood drawn in sudden violence as tempers scraped raw by resentment were grazed once too often, and there began to be a steady drain of setters away to the king’s works where they found masters’ standards less demanding, roughstone castle walls being a different creature altogether from smooth ashlared facings.
