The Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

whistled. The boy who had asked the question was a Damien Hirst fan, and unlikely to be converted to Cormac’s own passion, but he was himself quite a promising artist while lacking that commitment that would lift him into another sphere. He was young, though; Cormac had to remind himself of that when tempted to judge his pupils too harshly.
    ‘Nature inspired him, and life itself,’ he responded,though he had to admit that it was true that Rodin had been obsessed by women and their sexuality. His sculptures demonstrated that fully and gloriously.
    ‘Would you call them erotic?’ asked a boy called Jason, tongue in cheek, as Cormac was aware. Jason had brought in a piece of work decorated with dog shit on one occasion and had pretended indignation when asked to remove it. ‘What about those pictures daubed with elephant shit? They were hung in a gallery.’ Cormac had said that the ordure of elephants obviously could not smell as strongly as that of dogs.
    ‘Or pornographic,’ put in Robbie, the Damien Hirst fan, and then answered himself. ‘It might be if it was on page three, mightn’t it?’
    Cormac inclined his head, acknowledging his point.
    ‘Do you think an artist’s personality is reflected in his work?’ asked Clarinda, frowning a little.
    ‘What do you think?’ Cormac asked the class.
    ‘I reckon it was with Jason’s dog shit,’ said Robbie, which caused some laughter and meant that he had to duck out of Jason’s range.
    ‘I think we could say that Rodin’s personality is reflected in his work,’ said Cormac, bringing them back to the central topic, though he enjoyed it when their discussions wandered off at tangents. ‘He was a very passionate and sensual man. His work is charged withemotion and energy, you can tell that even seeing it here on the screen, two-dimensionally.’
    ‘Did he have it off with his models then?’ asked Robbie.
    ‘As a matter of fact, yes, he usually did.’
    The room was warm, the discussion genial. Cormac felt in good form and was not even riled when one of the boys asked him if he had any other heroes but Rodin, making him sound like a football follower.
    ‘Don’t you feel a need to move on?’
    ‘I hope I have moved on, in that I have looked at other things and I admire many of them, though I do confess – without shame! – that I find it difficult when it comes to sculpture to go past Rodin. To my mind he is the king.’
    Cormac left school that afternoon, feeling buoyant, to walk home. Teaching got a sad press but he enjoyed it, most of the time. He’d had a good afternoon.
    He sometimes thought he had better conversations with his students than he did when he and Rachel went to dinner parties, especially those given by colleagues of his or hers. They talked about Edinburgh restaurants and foreign holidays. He and Rachel usually went to southern Europe, to France, Italy or Spain, and so could not compare notes on Bangkok, Bali or Copocabana Beach.
     
    Turning a corner, on his way home, he bumped into Clarinda. At the time that was what he thought: that hehad bumped into her, that their meeting was accidental. Later, while walking the streets and sitting in cafés, a suspended man, ruminating over his fate, he would come to wonder if she had been waiting for him that day and other days.
    ‘I really enjoy your classes, Mr Aherne,’ she said.
    He was pleased, even flattered, for who would not be pleased when receiving praise from a pupil? The pupils were the ones that mattered most, after all, not the dreary inspectors who came and sat at the back of the class trying to look benign.
    ‘I do think Rodin’s wonderful, too. I’ve only seen your slides and photographs of course and I know they won’t be anything like the real thing. I can’t wait to get to Paris!’
    Cormac smiled. He had felt like that on the brink of his first trip. His mother had not been happy about him going off to the French capital on his own even though he had been eighteen