Page 31 of Days You Were Mine

Sometimes, especially when he’s stoned, Jake talks about the times we’re living in, this age of reinvention and aspiration, where anything might happen and you can be whoever you want.

‘We’re young at exactly the right time, when people areprepared to take a chance on us. When we can make our own success.’

The first time he said this, I thought: it’s all right for you, you’re already halfway there, the front cover ofSoundsmagazine, two Top 20 singles under your belt. Me? I’m a nobody. Just an undergraduate art student racked with ambition and the need to impress her father. But his self-belief is infectious, and with the band’s flattering and constant acclaim, I’m beginning to hope that perhaps I might be halfway there too.

And then the most extraordinary thing happens. A casual Tuesday at the Slade, no classes, and I’m in the studio working on a painting of the boys, Eddie, Jake and Tom all in black, lounging on a violet sofa, that wonderful juxtaposition of masculine and feminine. I’m interested in the pale purple slashes of this fabric, the mottling of silver grey where the material has rubbed, and I’m trying out a tight stippling technique to achieve it. Next to me, Rick has almost finished a portrait of David Bowie, borrowed from a Sunday supplement photograph but colour-washed in red. The effect is like a red-based sepia; it looks amazing.

Neither of us has spoken for hours, there have been no tea breaks; our absorption is absolute.

When Lawrence Croft, the principal, walks through the door, without warning or ceremony, accompanied by Robin Armstrong, the famous gallery owner and patron of Disciples, it takes us a few seconds to register their presence.

‘Hard at work, I see,’ Lawrence says. ‘These two always are. I don’t think workaholic is too strong a word.’

‘Mind if I take a look?’ Robin asks, and inwardly we both recoil – I know this without looking – but Rick says, ‘Of course,’ and stands up to allow him a clearer view.

‘I always see Bowie in red too,’ Robin says, after a goodminute or two of looking. ‘It must be the Ziggy Stardust lightning flash. I liked your self-portrait in San Lorenzo, by the way. I’ve been keeping an eye on you.’

It’s hard to keep a straight face, knowing how this remark will have Rick doing inner cartwheels of joy, but we both remain nonchalant, casual.

‘Do you plan on staying with portraiture? Unfashionable right now, of course.’

‘I don’t really care about that,’ Rick says. ‘I’m interested in people. I want to catch that moment of honesty when you get a glimpse of who they really are. I’m quite ruthless. If there’s no chemistry between me and the sitter, I’ll just abandon it halfway through.’

Robin nods at this, and a glance passes between him and Lawrence before he turns to examine my painting.

‘I’ve come to know these boys rather well and your likenesses are exceptional. Jake tells me you’re documenting this phase of their career with informal sketches?’

‘To begin with I was working on artwork for the new album. But the project has sort of grown.’

‘I think there might be something more interesting to be done with this, given that Disciples have a record to promote, one I’m keen to support however I can. Why don’t you and Jake pop into the gallery tomorrow evening? Bring any finished sketches with you and we’ll have a proper chat.’

The Robin Armstrong Gallery is in Duke Street, next door to the Bernard Jacobson Gallery, which has a Lucian Freud charcoal in the window, a nude woman with unevenly sized breasts and cartoonish kohl-rimmed eyes. Freud gave a lecture in our first term, one hundred per cent attendance from students and tutors and a relatively forgettable seminar about colour. Thething I remember most clearly is the coffee afterwards, where he was to be seen locked in earnest conversation with a gaggle of pretty female students.

To see Freud displayed in the next-door window, to know that I am about to have an informal chat with one of the most revered gallerists in London, is to tremor with nerves. But I have Jake by my side, the top half of his body almost hidden behind my one finished canvas, the boys picnicking in Hyde Park. He pauses just before we reach the door.

‘Alice,’ he says, lowering the canvas so that I can look into his eyes. ‘There is absolutely nothing to worry about.’

The gallery is closed, but an assistant unlocks the door for us and shows us into Robin’s office, bypassing walls hung with his most famous clients: Gillian Ayres, Peter Sedgley. In contrast to the sparse white-walled gallery, the office has the feel of an old gentleman’s club, or at least how I’d imagine one: deep-red and chocolate-brown colours, a magnificent leather-topped desk where Robin is sitting, an ancient-looking chesterfield sofa for his visitors. The room is crammed with artefacts: carved ebony heads, a marble nude, a framed series of painted gradient circles, each one more intensely coloured and mesmerising than the last; you realise on entering that here is a man who has dedicated his life to beauty. He is dressed in a navy velvet suit with a pale yellow silk shirt, and he stands up as we walk in, arms around Jake in an enveloping hug, for me a European kiss on both cheeks.

He gestures to the sofa, and the three of us sit like podded peas, me in the middle, flipping through my sketchbooks.

At first Robin says nothing, and I fill the silence with background noise about each sketch. It’s easier when I’m talking about Jake, my specialist subject; I’m able to tell him why I think something works and what I was trying to achieve.

Together we examine a drawing of Jake sitting up in bed bare-chested, notepad balanced on his knees. He is songwriting and completely absorbed, one of the best times to draw him. I’ve caught the abstraction in the way he concentrates, an almost dreamlike quality, yet his focus is so absolute it’s as if he is surrounded by an impenetrable wall.

‘For me this works because Jake is unguarded, lost in thought. It’s obvious to the viewer that he’s thinking about a song, and I think it shows the effort and intensity that goes into the creation of the music.’

‘Do you know, Alice, I rather think you’re on to something.’

Robin stands up and walks back to his desk.

‘You’ll be with the band in Italy, I assume?’

Jake says, ‘We haven’t got around to that, but of course you should come. If you’d like to.’ He looks at me quickly and squeezes my leg.

‘It’s an important stage in the band’s career,’ Robin says. ‘I’ll cover all your expenses, no need to worry about that.’

‘I’ve longed to go to Florence,’ I say, and he smiles for the first time.

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