Hands
Title: Hands
Rating: 15/ NC-17
Content: Some mild sexual references and mild profanities.
I see him concentrating as he paints by way of demonstration, his brush a child's fingers over a foreign surface on the canvas - light, tentative. I should be concentrating. I know I should. In a matter of days I'll be faced with the exam, and I'll have to force myself to focus; he'll be wandering around the desks keeping an eye on everyone's process. Already in our current hour of practice I can feel his eyes boring into my back as he passes by. My art, a cheap imitation of his, is visually pleasing yet plain; but the shiver he inspires in me inspires my art, and I continue on with my own, less worn brush. Our subject for this term has been anatomy, and it's been something I've taken to rather well - especially our focus for the past week or so.
Beneath my quiet concentration, which is still pierced with the occasional glance in his direction, various watercolour hands appear and decorate the intimidating whiteness of the paper. I glance around. Everybody else's are very good; perhaps I'd be jealous if mine weren't better. In the paper-hands beneath my own, I see life and beauty. It isn't arrogance; goodness only knows that I'm devoid of imagination, and it's crippling to any artistic talent I may actually bear. All the credit for the beauty in my work today lies with the subject. I glance sideways as he takes a seat at his desk, eyes tired and a little wrinkled at the corners. Laughter lines. I smile to myself, but it's not his eyes I'm interested in. Not today. My eyes drift down.
I've always been fascinated by his hands. Today, I find them slightly torn where he's bitten at the corner of his thumb distractedly. His right hand - his dominant hand - is smeared with the indigo paint he used to add shadow to on the side of his palm nearest the little finger. I tactfully ignore the silver band around his left ring finger; it means very little anyway. He removes it and fiddles with it when he's thinking; it's the little things like that make me love him all the more; aside his tenderness, of course, and his shy disposition. There's dye from the messier projects he sets for the younger years staining his hands, too. Funny, isn't it, how some teachers' pets want to wash their tutor's blackboards? I want to wash his hands; want to soak them in warm, soapy water and wipe the colour and the smudged-lead monotony away with massaging fingers.
I want more than that, but if I'm not careful my face will be dyed a hue deeper and far more telling than his inky palms. I dedicate all my thoughts to my work, deciding thath the rose-pink flush of my cheeks could easily be attributed to concentration. In my mind there's really very little point in hiding my obsession, least of all from myself, but even I am aware that sometimes it's best to keep things secret from the outside world. Students falling in love with their teachers is not a subject treated lightly; perhaps rightfully so, in some cases.
As I continue to work, I decide firmly that the silver band is not to be included in my depiction.
We're all surprised when the bell rings; him included, and I can't hide my amusement as he looks up bemusedly at the clock. "Sorry, guys; I hadn't noticed the time. As soon as you're all packed away, you may leave." Until the last student has left, he avoids my eyes; as soon as the door has banged closed, he raises them with a soft, tentative smile. "Well, I knew you wouldn't." He nods at my work as he steps over, jacket loose-fitting and cheap on his muscleless frame. It suits him. "They're very good. Were you alright with today's lesson, then?"
I reach out a hand; a real one. My palm cools his face, which is warm with the pressure of saying the right thing; doing the right thing. His eyes close briefly; he is tired. His day today is a hard one, I know. He smiles contentedly, and moves beside me to appraise the study of his own hands properly. With a quick glance at the real thing, his smile broadens a little. "You must know them better than I do. You barely looked at me this lesson." There's a hint of dejection in his tone, barely recognisable, but still I fend it off with a glance and a tease.
"I was concentrating."
"Yes... so was I." Shyly, he passes me a sheet of paper on which a young nude reclines, legs curled under her, on an armchair; his armchair, and my unclothed form. He doesn't need any appraisal but my wide, cheeky smile, tinted by the same shyness as his - neither of us are very confident as people. We are united by that and our art, but aside these things we are somewhat different as people. Opposites attract, they say. His slightly greying hair is ruffled from his habit of messing it up as he draws, and I reach up to sort it out. "Maybe both our memories are better than we give them credit for."
The door in the hall opens, and we move smoothly apart before the head of department can destroy us merely by looking at us as he steps briskly into the room; as usual, he has a loveless air about him despite his handsome face, which makes me wonder why any of the girls swoon over him as they do. "You don't happen to have 9P's behaviour report somewhere, do you, Paul?"
"Oh! Oh, I do, actually, yes. It's somewhere on my desk..."
His attention drifts to that scrap of paper, desperate to redeem himself after the man before him had shone the spotlight on his moment of disorganisation. His house is surprisingly tidy; everything save for his art room. Everything save for his art room is devoid of him, too. I continue tidying away my things, clearing my brush of the paint under a slow cascade of water, drawing the process out so that we might be alone again. It's difficult at school, but somehow the danger makes it better. He's loved me in the supply cupboard before, as awkward as that was; the sounds of screaming children were hushed by the walls surrounding us and drowned out by the clashing of pots of pencils as they hit the floor, elbowed away from where they belonged in the midst of breathless kisses and whispered, tender and meaningless sounds.
I can hear Mr. Welsh's serious drone as a vague humming in my ears, focusing only on his submissive, hummed responses and the satisfying sound of paper being dragged across his desk as he hunts for the bit he needs. Eventually he finds it; it sings as it slips smugly past the other sheets, accompanying his triumphant, "Aha! Here it is." As it sounded like silk in his delicate hands - and delicate they were, for a man of his age - so too did it sound like crackling ugliness in his superior's. There wasn't really a difference, of course - no difference to anybody but me. I turn with my dripping brushes as they shed their bathwater onto a paper towel - the blue school standard ones that really aren't up to much of a standard at all - and examine his face as he watches Mr. Welsh read it.
"Actually," came the drone, "this is last week's."
"Oh."
"I was looking for this one as well, as it were, but... you don't happen to have the current one, do you?"
"I'm not entirely sure. I thought I did..." It dawns on us both at the same time. My eyes flick to my sensual portrait, and I drag his hands over my naked body to lift both into my art folder quickly. He's gone a little red. The danger isn't exciting anymore. I only want it to end; I want it to end for him. The silver band slips from his finger and he fiddles with it. "I'll check again. Maybe I was getting them confused..."
"Maybe," says Mr. Welsh skeptically, with his eye on the piece of paper that I've just stashed away. For a moment I think we've gotten away with it, and then... and then, of course, it's all over. "What's that you've got there?" Evidently he doesn't want me to answer verbally; he extends his own rough, sandpapery hand out for the drawing. I don't want to hand it over. I can't. There's love in those pencil-marks, and I want to keep it. It's mine. He drew it for me. Still, my own hands draw the portrait out of my folder relucantly and hand it over. I feel as though I'm naked now, and a thick blush settles across my face; I can feel it on my shoulders, too. Having embraced my still-damp watercolour of the hands, it looks as if paper-me is blushing, too. He doesn't look up at me. "Is this yours?"
"Yes," I respond quietly, shooting a quick glance at Paul. I can almost hear his heart thudding from here. I can see it in his eyes. What was he doing getting involved with a student? He'd never be employed anywhere else - God forbid he make love to another seventeen-year-old pupil against the shelving in the supply cupboard. Despite the fact that he's questioning his logic, however, I don't think he regrets it. I don't, either. For a moment our thoughts are one and the same, and we're forced to look away as Mr. Welsh speaks again.
"What I mean to say is... did you draw this?"
Unable to recall whether or not there'd been a signature at the bottom of the portrait, and frightened to lie about it just in case, I look down to my feet. "No." I'm not talented enough to have produced anything like that anyway; he'd never have believed me. Even though Paul understands this, he looks to the side, to the wall, where nobody's eyes can meet his. He wishes I'd lied, even though he knows it wouldn't have made any difference. I feel like I have to repeat myself; to assert, at least, that if we're going to be found out, that I'm not ashamed of what I've done. Perhaps it's wrong of me. "No, I didn't."
It takes Mr. Welsh a second either a second or a year to continue as he turns the picture over and over in his hands; it feels disgusting, and I wish he'd put it down. "Paul, would you come with me for a moment, please?"
It's over.
"Sir-"
"Perhaps you'd like to wait here, Jennifer. I'd like to speak to you as well."
Paul's wedding ring drops onto the desk beside him as he leaves the classroom. Of course, that will be over too, by the end of it. I bite my lip, and once the door in the corridor has closed on this chapter of my life, I take a step towards it, intending to move it over to his desk, but find myself unable to touch it even after he has disassociated himself with it; perhaps because I know that it is because of me that he has been forced to do so. Guilt-ridden, I turn away.
From the corner of my eye, I catch sight of a folded piece of official-looking paper that has fallen to the floor underneath Paul's desk.