Image by Niamh Jones.
ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE
It had just rained and the trees were reacting, swaying, trying to pluck the air. Ducks with curved bodies nestled along the damp walls by the river. Grey hummed through the college, playing against the wet walls, splaying itself on the wet concrete.
I was aware that my coat was black, that the sky was very grey, and the grass was very green. It was a harsh exchange, but I did not take off my coat.
AT THE ENTRANCE
‘Mr Jacobsen?’ I smiled. He was turned away from me, his gaze hung on the Barbara Hepworth sculpture on the right lawn, stopped on the walkway over the moat.
‘It is in the wrong place,’ he said. Each of his words measured but sweet, unindulgent. ‘See over there,’ he pointed to the lawn on the other side of the path, his hands curved in the air to show me where its edges would be, ‘it works better there.’ I turned, saw another sculpture on the other stretch of grass, another Hepworth and another Hepworth shadow; it made sense here, more curved and more transparent.
We stood beside the rectangular moat, our reflections cast across it, without motion. I twisted my head, watched my duplicate turn; Jacobsen had no reflection.
I stepped forwards, placing my foot just on the surface, just enough so my foot made the smallest impression, dipped the smallest way into the black water. I dropped my foot, let the water sink to my ankle, let it hit the bottom of the pool. I brought my other foot beside. Floating leaves, the edges of stalks clung to where my trousers met the water. My legs were heavy.
I looked at the architect beside me. I saw him move his foot, step forwards onto the water beside me, stand perfectly still on its surface. He lifted up one of his feet, picking off a leaf which had attached itself to the sole of his shoe. Looking ahead, across the lawns, he reached down and swept the water with his hand. I felt a small wave brush against my legs. A duck further down gently bobbed against the ripple and then climbed out onto the grass. I looked up at Jacobsen. He walked atop the strip of water as I waded through it, gathering stalks and leaves in my hands.
INTO THE QUAD, BENEATH THE BLOCK
We did not stop here, we continued walking; he was caught in thought. I watched the concrete lines pass beneath me. My shoes left footprints of water across the ground; his left none.
IN THE QUAD
He walked towards the circle of lawn in the centre of the quad, allowing the tips of his shoes to bend the edging blades of grass. There was a ‘keep off the grass’ sign stuck into the soil. He stood, his sight absorbing the lawn, staring into it, as if he would find some truth if he kept looking, but would fall in if he came too close. When he pointed at the tree in the centre of the quad I expected it to dance. I expected it to writhe beneath the gaze of his finger and to move, to brush the wind and become again what he had imagined. It remained still, placid. It was perfectly horizontal, perfectly edged in the sky against the block behind it. Solid, still, pretending to be a tree.
‘Why didn’t it move?’ I asked.
‘It is exactly how I intended it to be,’ he said. ‘It does not need to move.’ He observed as I watched the cedar tree. ‘It is perfectly alive already.’
I walked across the grass, my wet shoes pressing into the soil, pressing on the heads of the stalks of grass.
IN THE LIBRARY
I left him in the centre of the room so I could find a book, saw him find a chair and settle down, open a newspaper before him and disappear into the room.
I returned and sat at one of the chairs. I could not see him.
‘Mr Jacobsen?’
‘Yes?’ The man beside me brought his newspaper down. I could only see his face, his glasses. The rest of him was unnoticeable, indistinguishable from the library and from his chair. His chair — the swan chair — held him so that he could not be seen: his arms inseparable from the chair’s, his back from its back, his legs a part of the floor. Perfect?
‘You have disappeared,’ I said.
‘Why would you be able to see me?’
IN THE DINING ROOM
Jacobsen’s cutlery was set across the long tables: knife, fork, spoon, teaspoon. We sat together, waiting to eat.
‘Have you ever used a teaspoon like this?’ he said. He held it up. It was thin, metal, a tiny basin for its head. He grasped it in his large hand. It disappeared. ‘If you use it, it disappears too. You will not even notice it. It almost,’ he paused, ‘is not there.’
He took out a pipe from an inner pocket in his jacket.
‘There’s no smoking,’ I said. He raised his eyebrows. He pulled out a notebook and an ink pen; he began to draw.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I will design an ashtray.’
PAST THE JCR, AT THE PORTER’S LODGE
‘What do you think of the colour?’ he asked. The air was fresh and clear, unchanged by the rain or the concrete.
‘Of the college? I don’t like the yellow bricks.’
‘But imagine what it would be like if they weren’t yellow. Follow—’ he gestured by the sculpture at the entrance to the college, to the wall which surrounded it, cutting it from the air ‘—follow the low wall with your eyes. Do you see the balance?’ He spoke almost to himself, his hand tracing his own imaginary line in parallel with the wall. ‘It suits the horizontal.’
I looked; the college had almost disappeared. I turned to look down the path towards the JCR, the way we had come.
‘You are not supposed to notice,’ he said.