Returning home from somewhere on my bike Friday evening before last, oh yes, from Kathy and Dan's, I noticed that there were people around the old Tate - Tate Britain as it's now called - and realised that it was one of its late opening evenings, first Friday of the month. My route home is past the back of it. It being a bit early for bed, I locked up, went in the side entrance and wandered around the area immediately inside, the downstairs hall and ticket area by the temporary exhibition galleries where people queue and wait around.
What kind of people go to the Tate on a Friday evening? The young and well dressed and beautiful and fashion aware, mainly in couples. In search of someone, humanity, an encounter, with x, in search of myself x, I wandered up to the cavernous self-service restaurant. It was closed or closing. I asked one of the people working there whether it was still open. It was and she encouraged me to go further in and get something but I thanked her for the information and retreated. She reacted as if she found this strange, which it was, I suppose. Just asking a question fulfilled a need.
Walking back towards the side exit, I went into the bookshop, non-commitedly, to the first table and flicked a bit. £16.95. My bicycle and bed beckoning, I still loitered in the hall. It was busy, full of 'last chancers'. It was the last week-end of a 'Holbein in England' exhibition. By the exhibition exit, one of the attendants - door-watchers - was talking excitedly in Spanish to three young Spaniards.
Not understanding a word but drawn in by her excitement as they appeared to be, understanding that it was something to do with the exhibition, I joined the posse as she turned around and swept them into exhibition in her wake. It was a special closing-time tour, at a back-door price. I followed through one crowded room and another and another, until she and they stood right up against a full-length portrait of some courtier of Henry VIII, all studying the bottom of it. A personal discovery, a secret, to share. I asked what was it. It was the big toe.
I asked could I join the tour. Of course. Eva, for it was Eva from Barcelona I learnt on leaving her, pointed to how the big toe was in the wrong position on the courtier's left foot, that he had in fact two right feet. Was it a mistake? What did it mean? All I understood was the high excitement. Charged with it, the tour charged on, back to the next room that we had just been through. Eva, who had, she said, studied art history, got us to stand slightly to the right of a portrait of a young man sketched or painted from that side in half profile. From what exact angle had Holbein drawn or painted the man? From no angle. There was no such angle, Eva insisted. Look, if you
(To be continued)
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