Toe in the Water

Few Encounters

Few Encounters

If I ever met a real artist, his name was Harry Few. Of all the Fine Arts students that I knew at university, there was only one that we all knew was the real thing and Harry was it. We were dimly aware that we were playing at being artists, as talented as some of us were. And we bolstered the pretence with activities we felt suitable to our status as a small and separate group amongst the masses of a predominantly agriculture-biased institute of learning. So we would buy loaves of French bread and bottles of cheap wine and sit on the grass in the park to consume them (Dejeuner sur l'herbe) and get ourselves invited to Performing Arts parties at our sister university down in Durban (as the only one whose other major was English Literature, these also gave me a chance to assume the cloak of the great writer, brooding grimly amidst the general frivolity). Harry was never a part of all this, however.

I first heard of him early in my second year. For a long time he was known only as "one of the first years" and his exploits, as well as his paintings, became legendary as the stories about him spread. It was rumoured, for instance, that he made money to support his drinking by going on board merchant ships in Durban harbour and drawing portraits for the crew. And his paintings were wildly different, with none of the obvious influence of our tutors that crept into the work of all of us. Harry's work never changed, resisting all attempts to tame it, just as its creator went his wild way uncurbed.

In time, we learned that his name was Harry Few and descriptions began to filter through. He was a little fellow, apparently, with glasses and ragged hair, the very antithesis of our image of "The Great Artist" and a complete contradiction of the tales of his exploits. Yet those stories were true, as I found out when I met him eventually. He made light of them, considering them nothing out of the ordinary, and even inviting me on one of his sailor-drawing adventures. I ducked, although I cannot remember whether my excuse was real or invented.

It seems strange to me now that a long time passed before I met this fabled character. I suppose my mind was on other things at the time and Harry was so often not on campus, his exploits requiring frequent absences. And, when we did meet, it was not momentous and little came of it except the discovery that our homes were but a few miles apart. In the rest of my time at university, I think we only bumped into each other on two or three occasions. When I left, I assumed that was the last I would hear of him but it seemed that he had a higher regard for our acquaintance than did I. It was a surprise when he sought me out and appeared on the doorstep, bottle of brandy in hand.

This became the standard procedure when Harry came home on a break from university; he would turn up with the inevitable bottle of brandy and we would proceed through the evening, talking and getting steadily more inebriated until the bottle was drained. He drew incessantly and would show me the results. I did one drawing in his style, both to see if I could do it and in homage. The result was similar but without that explosion of wild emotion so typical of Harry's stuff; mine was cool and quiet. I think it was the writer in me that insisted upon more order in my drawings - and so he was the greater artist.

Harry had left university by the time I lost contact with him. There came a Christmas when he did not turn up and I learned that he was suffering from alcohol poisoning. The doctor had insisted upon an alcohol-free regime and somehow Harry's parents had enforced the ban. I had never pursued the friendship, being busy with my own life and not really a drinker anyway; my dreams of being a great painter had faded too as writing became more important to me.

So Harry became no more than a memory to me. But he left me two things that remain with me still: one, a stomach so abused by sudden bouts of brandy consumption that I have not been able to touch the stuff since, and two, the knowledge that, if there is such a thing as a great artist, I knew one once.


Word Count: 768