Read Online The Glasgow Coma Scale by Neil Stewart - Free Book Online Page A

.’ He held his pencil on the angle and started to fill in a triangular area to one side of the nose. ‘And what else am I going to tell you? What is it I’m always saying is your most important skill?’
    He mouthed the word, and ‘Ob-ser-
va
-tion,’ the old dears chorused back, kindling in Angus a crushing sense of purgatorial damnation, week in, week out the same call-and-response, a geriatric circle-jerk of mutual congratulation.
    ‘Right! So I want you to
observe
’ – Dean left his easel and began walking around the group, several already having embarked on their own drawings – ‘where light is coming from, and where it falls. What shadow is cast, heavy or faint. What shape it makes. Don’t just guess –
look
, properly look. You’re working from . . .’ Ruefully he waved a hand at the statue. ‘Well, from life.’
    Although inclined to sneer at Dean’s manner, Angus found that both the tutor and the environment were actually helping him to relax, though the fact remained that a statue was a bloody silly subject for sketching. Picking up his pencil and beginning to make lines, he found himself navigating his way back into a mnemonic space he’d thought no longer accessible. An old desire reasserted itself: the wish to excel, to show how much better he was than the others. It did help, although he was not old – grizzled, that was how he liked to imagine himself, there being some wiggle-room for romance in that word – to be bossed around by someone so young. Antipathy was crucial, something specific to rail against. Maybe in Dean’s imagination his shaved head gave him more authority, but all the onlooker saw was a big-eyed neonate whose bare scalp gave the impression that he’d had problems with late-onset head lice.
    Angus finished a preliminary outline of the statue, but its features were too inhuman to be satisfying. Bored already, he fell to wondering how Lynne was coping without him for a whole evening. Writing sonnets dedicated to him? Ha, no, probably glad to be rid of him – probably up to her tits in an orgy right this minute. He sniggered. Poor Lynne was so uptight she probably didn’t even like to
think
the word.
    Footsteps approached from the entranceway, clopping like hooves on the marble. A chair scraped back and he heard Dean’s voice squeak out, ‘Come on in, China, we’re just starting.’
    It was nearer seven than six. Are we fuck just starting, Angus thought, but when he saw China, he understood why Dean was cutting her this slack.
    ‘Sorry. Hi. Sorry.’ She came sidling into the group, long black coat and a nest of slate-coloured hair seamed silver, though she was maybe mid twenties at most. Angus wasn’t left open-mouthed by her beauty or anything, but then again, here was that Nordic colouring he liked, indigo eyes, skin so pale it neared blue . . .
    ‘We thought maybe you weren’t coming. Don’t worry, don’t worry, let’s just quickly get you set up. Wherever you can find a space.’ Angus, acutely aware of the spare seat beside him that no one had risked taking, dropped his head. ‘How about over beside, er, Angus there?’
    Ha, that’s the ticket. He smiled sidelong at the newcomer, who looked back at him without expression. Then, as she manoeuvred her way into the circle, her bag struck the easel set up by one of the more enthusiastic students and brought it crashing to the ground. Equipment spilled and clattered – the old dears responding with wordless, vaguely censorious clucks and coos – and as China knelt to gather her pencil tin to her, ignoring the pensioner she’d jostled, Dean scurried to assist her with a solicitousness Angus recognized, understood, filed away.
    Ruckus over, the older students returned to their work, showing one another their experiments in shading with as much delight as if Dean had demonstrated how to transmute base metal into gold. By contrast, the concentration on China’s face as she set to work was ferocious, though