Fen. Freya North
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art matters. Henry Holden, who died sixteen years ago aged eighty-three, founded Trust Art in 1938 specifically to enable national art institutions to acquire works of modern art by grant, bequest or gift. Since his death, the Trust has published a bi-monthly magazine, Art Matters. Fen is unsure whether this is Happy Coincidence or Fate though she has consulted her left palm and right for an answer. She thinks it has to be more than coincidence and fate that the man who founded the organization for which she now works also championed Julius Fetherstone, befriending the artist in the 1930s, buying his works and bequeathing them to British galleries. Fen feels that Henry Holden is somehow passing the baton on to her. Lucky Julius. Safe hands.
Along with the Arts Council and the National Art Collections Fund, Trust Art ensures that works of art which may otherwise be sold overseas, are given homes in galleries and museums in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. It has stayed true to its original aim of saving modern art for the nation.
Originally, Henry Holden was the only salaried member of staff. The other six workers were volunteers and all but one were the eyelash-fluttering sisters of his Oxford rowing fraternity; the odd one out being the mother of the cox. They were all utterly in love with Henry. All had double-barrel led surnames, flats in SW Somewhere and places ‘in the country’. Trust Art now employs fourteen people, of whom three are part-time and three are volunteers. Continuing the tradition, these three are minor aristocracy.
Trust Art has long been housed in a clutch of rooms which are part of the labyrinthine network in Tate Britain’s back buildings. Not for them the prestigious Millbank address or approach. You cannot see the Thames from Trust Art’s offices; the view from the John Islip Street windows is of the nicely maintained mansion blocks. There’s little more than a sandwich bar and a newsagent nearby and the shops at Victoria necessitate a veritable march; consequently little more than brief window-shopping during a lunch-hour is possible. Fen is quite relieved that most her earnings will see their way into her bank account, and not be squandered on some impulsive lunch-time purchase, as Gemma’s and Abi’s invariably are.
Fen had arrived at her new job a full quarter of an hour before her contractual start time. And that was with a delay in a tunnel just after Camden Town. There was a veritable welcome brigade awaiting her. If she analysed the palm of her left hand, she was really rather embarrassed by the fuss. Her right hand, however, said that she was quietly rather flattered. Amongst the croissants and coffee set out in the boardroom-cum-library, Fen soon realized that it was all at the whim of Rodney Beaumont, the director of Trust Art; not so much to welcome her as to indulge himself. Consequently, watching him tuck into pastries and talk animatedly about anything but shop with his staff, made Fen feel much less conspicuous. And it was nice to meet the fourteen staff who, it soon occurred to Fen, were as diverse as the art the Trust was saving for the nation.
From Fundraising, three girls with pearls, hearts of gold and hyphenated surnames provided a nice contrast with the two dowdy accountants, sweet but dull, with little interest in art but a near-obsessive passion for stretching the Trust’s funds in all directions. The sober Acquisitions team, essentially art historians rather than administrators, dressed demurely and talked art earnestly with Fen, in hushed tones and with much eye contact. The two women in Membership could double for headmistress and hockey captain and Fen found herself promising them that she’d deliver Trust Art leaflets to all the streets within walking distance of her own.
Fen particularly liked Bobbie, the receptionist, who was clad in an extraordinary polka-dot ensemble as daring for a woman in her fifties as for an institution as seemingly staid as Trust Art. Bobbie was as categorically Cockney as Rodney Beaumont (who looked like an extra in a Merchant Ivory production of any Evelyn Waugh novel) was wholly Home Counties. He lolloped around the room like a young labrador, or an overgrown schoolboy (though he must be nearing fifty), tucking into the croissants. Fen mused that there were probably conkers and catapults and dusty pieces of chocolate in his pockets. He was affable and ingenuous and kept grinning at Fen, sticking his thumbs up or saying crikey! what goodies you are going to unearth! terrifically exciting, terrifically!
And then a tall man, much her own age and appearing to be constructed from pipe-cleaners and drinking straws, such was his thinness, introduced himself. Sidling up to her, he ate his croissant in a silent and contemplative fashion whilst visibly assessing Fen from top to toe. After much teeth sucking and de-crumbing of fingers, he smacked his lips, held out his hand and made her acquaintance.
‘Otter. I’m Otter. Charmed to meet you,’ he said in a voice so camp that Fen initially thought he was putting it on.
‘What do you do here?’ Fen asked, wanting to stroke his hand for fear of breaking it on shaking it. ‘And why are you called Otter?’
‘I work in Publications,’ he said, running bony fingers through a surprisingly dense flop of sand-blond hair, ‘and I am called Otter because Gregory John Randall-Otley is a mouthful.’ He paused, licked his lips and leant in close. ‘A fucking mouthful,’ he bemoaned. ‘Anyway, what sort of a name is Fen, then?’
Fen whispered, ‘It’s short for Fenella.’
Suddenly, she felt utterly buoyant; as if she’d just been afforded a glimpse, via coffee and croissants and people coming to say hullo, of future fun to be had at work. Fen had been excited enough about the job itself and now she discovered, almost as an added bonus, colleagues so affable. On the face of it, backgrounds were distinctly contrary and yet (hopefully not just on the face of it) the staff of Trust Art seemed non-judgemental, genuine and unconditionally friendly. Apart from Judith St John, deputy director, whose steely exterior and somewhat cursory handshake Fen had told herself must just be an unfortunate manner, surely.
‘And when are you Fenella?’ asked the man called Otter. ‘Only on very special occasions?’
‘I am only ever Fen,’ she declared, pausing for effect, ‘unless I’m being told off.’
Otter narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his skinny hips. ‘And are you told off often?’
Fen feigned offence and clasped her hand to her heart. ‘The dread of being called Fenella ensures that I behave perfectly all the time.’ She kept her eyes wide whilst Otter narrowed his all the more.
‘It will become,’ he said, with great conviction, ‘my aim in life to make you misbehave. I shall then call you Fenella at the top of my voice and with much satisfaction,’ Otter proclaimed triumphantly. ‘Now Ed,’ he said, looking around the room, ‘Ed would have you misbehaving in no time, Fen McCabe. Where is he, the bugger? Late. Must have been misbehaving himself.’
Fen laughed. ‘Does that mean we’re going to call him Edward or Edwyn, or whatever his full name is, very sternly all day today?’
Otter regarded her quizzically but before he could answer, Rodney whistled piercingly through his fingers, compounding Fen’s overgrown-schoolboy theory. ‘The meet and greet is over!’ the director exclaimed with gusto good enough for a town crier, or a master of ceremonies, or a soapbox at Speaker’s Corner. ‘There is art to save for the nation – and, more to the point, no bloody croissants left!’
The Archive room was smaller than Fen remembered from her interview, and the boxes seemed to have increased twofold. She sat down in the typist’s chair and swivelled hard, discovering that however hard she propelled herself, the chair conscientiously returned her dead in front of the computer. She ran her fingers lightly over the keyboard, as if eliciting soft notes from a piano, then rotated herself once clockwise, once anti-clockwise. She stared out of the window to the courtyard below which separated Trust Art from the Tate. The incongruous floral roller blind was half down and she gave it a tug to zap it up and let in more light. However, it unfurled with a clacketting whoosh, like a roll of wallpaper from on high, and subsequently refused to be rolled up by hand, let alone spring back by a pull at its cord. Let it hang. Switch on the light instead. A travesty on a fine April morning but better than wrestling with the blind or being held in the dark.
Fen regarded the floor-to-ceiling metal shelving standing up valiantly under the tonnage of brown archive boxes. She felt simultaneously unnerved and excited.