Free Lifesaver by Louise Voss

job section of The Guardian . The smell of the tuna drifted across the counter at me, making my nostrils flare involuntarily.
    ‘Excuse me? I’d like some more information about some of these courses.’
    ‘Which ones?’ He took a large bite of sandwich, dropping a blob of grey tuna onto the lapel of his jacket.
    ‘Um. The art ones. The daytime art ones.’
    I had to wait a few seconds while the man chewed exaggeratedly, jabbing a forefinger towards his mouth to indicate that he wasn’t able to respond just at that moment. Eventually he swallowed. He hadn’t noticed the spillage.
    ‘I beg your pardon. If you’d like to take the second left along that corridor behind you, you will find the Art Department. The departmental secretary’s name is Pamela Wilkins. She should be able to help you with any questions.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said, glad that Adam taught arty subjects and not something nerdy and complicated like Applied Maths or Computer Aided Technology. As I walked off down the corridor, with the smell of furniture polish and school dinners in my nose - not nice, but better than the tuna sandwich—I couldn’t help but feel excited. That secretary knew Adam. May even have met Max. I slowed my pace, to give myself time to think of what to say.
    I put my head around the open door of the Art Department. It was a big, messy room, covered in a grey film of clay dust. Charcoal nudes and some abstract tapestries hung on the walls—rather good, I thought, not that I was any judge of artistic merit. I couldn’t draw the most basic of dogs without it looking like a donkey. Scarred melamine-topped tables were arranged in a horseshoe formation around the edge of the room. I remembered those tables from school—different coloured tops, and metal tubes for legs.
    There was nobody about, but just as I stepped inside I heard brisk footsteps behind me in the corridor. I hadn’t really given it much thought, but I supposed if anyone had asked me, I’d have imagined that the secretary of an Art Department would be small and slight, elfin, and would waft around distributing pastels and putting away paintbrushes, dressed in a variety of floaty, probably crocheted garments. In hues of rainbow.
    Pamela Wilkins, of course, could not have been more different.
    ‘Are you looking for me?’ she cried heartily. ‘Sorry. Just popped out to the little girls’ room.’ She pushed past me through the doorway. ‘Come in, come in.’
    I surveyed her, impressed at how any woman could care so little for her appearance. She was about four foot two, late forties, perhaps, with thick stubby legs and enormously wide hips, across which a fantastically horrible bright blue pleated and patterned nylon skirt sat, a good six inches higher round the back. She had long dull black hair, a visible, almost luxuriant black moustache, and wore not a scrap of make-up. I suppressed a vision of her leaping naked through a bluebell field, paintbrush in mouth, hair whipping around her head, stopping every now and then to daub colour onto a large canvas nearby…
    ‘If you’re Pamela Wilkins, then yes, I’m looking for you. The man on reception suggested I come and talk to you about the art courses.’
    ‘Ah, poor Wilf. Yes. I’m sure I can tell you anything you need to know about this place—been here for twenty eight years, since it was first built, I have. People say that I must have been dug in with the foundations! Dug in with the foundations!’
    Her foundations did indeed look extremely solid, although it seemed an odd thing for ‘people’ to say. I suspected that she had coined the phrase herself. I also felt like asking her why Wilf was an object of pity, but decided not to push my luck straight away. There were other, more pressing things I needed to know.
    ‘Right. Well, I’m a total beginner at art, but I quite fancy something practical—mosaics, maybe?‘ I had no idea what one might make out of mosaic. Lamp bases, perhaps, or maybe that