Preamble:
My other story, "The Sculptor & His Mum" explored the tension arising when a son used his mature mum as a model. This story explores the tension arising when a mature brother uses his sister as a model. The two stories share some overarching thematic threads, with significant detail differences. They are independent stories which can be read separately.
There is taut nudity, exhibitionism, voyeurism and sibling taboo frisson tension in this story. Its raison d'être is to tease, and this, it does relentlessly. If you are looking for flailing, wailing and caterwauling sex, this is not for you.
Matt, an artist and sculptor, lives alone in an idyllic cliffside cottage. School chum, Zack is visiting. Matt wins a commission to produce artworks for a study on the female form. A celebration of mature femininity. He has difficulty sourcing a suitable and willing model. Matt enlists the help of his sister, Muriel. Zack observes the sibling interactions. Is there more than meets the eye?
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Chapter 1: Chums
Chapter 2: The Commission
Chapter 3: A Model Sister
Chapter 4: Webcam Audition
Chapter 5: Arrival
Chapter 6: Photoshoot
Chapter 7: Film
Chapter 8: Draw
Chapter 9: Dream Come True?
Chapter 10: Sculpt
Chapter 11: Exhibition
***
Chapter 1: Chums
Zack is six nautical miles from his destination, a cove in the English south coast. He trims his sail as he skims the brilliant skin of sea, striding the deep. He is as intimately close to the wind as he can be. He stares down the eye of the wind. This moves him, and his 38-foot yacht. Here he is again, romanticising the laws of physics.
The sky is a drifting canvas of sun and clouds. Of brilliant and filtered light. Zack thinks of the Joni Mitchell song. A fave of Matt and him. A folk anthem of an era. He thinks of Matt whom he will see again at landfall after twenty years.
"Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all"
And that is Matt on song. A cloud illusion as Zack recalls. He doesn't know Matt at all. An enigma. Enigmas are necessarily annoying or charming. Matt is the latter.
Zack first met Matt in university. Zack was pursuing a degree in Literature. He had a burning ambition to be a creative writer. Matt was pursuing a degree in Fine Arts. He nursed mild ambitions to be an artist and sculptor.
Aside from their being invested in the Humanities, they are a study of contrasts. Chalk and cheese.
Zack has short light brown hair. Dark eyes, bearing nuances of Mediterranean, mystified with hints of Levantine. He sports a little arrow tail of hair at his nape of neck. This is the only outward badge hint of his artistic bent. Medium shoulders. Nearly 6 feet tall. He bears the hallmarks of a competitive sailor, even though he is a recreational one. Bronzed toned arms and legs. He runs and workouts whenever he can, to compensate for the hours of physical inactivity as a writer. Age has added its final touches to his being. His form is softened and mellowed by his contoured vintage torso. Not a strapping lad for sure. A mature hunk.
Matt is the polar antithesis of Zack.
Five feet eight inches to Zack's sixer. He can shear a few choice rotund pounds off his critical mass. Where Zack is cryptically Levantine, Matt is Germanic in his face, in your face. The genetic works. Blindingly blonde. Ashen complexion bordering on anaemic. Corpse white. No genetic code to decrypt here. Clear as morning birdsong at the first break of spring. Careless mop of longish hair bunching into an irreverent ponytail. Scruffy beard. Matt is not handsome in the socially classic sense, but appealing in a brooding insouciant way.
Matt has the demeanor of modest aristocracy. Manners as opposed to etiquette. And confident, blasé, outrageous manners at that, which only the privileged gets away with without having to get away with. Matt offers an alternative subspecies mutation of the male beast from Zack's. Both are beasts with brains. Although Matt embodies that extra masculine bit of devilish monstrosity in his mien. This profile appeals to women who are longing for something more, but don't know it.
Zack is the curious, effervescent, communicative humanist. He is in his element in a sea of words. He is convinced that Art follows Life.
Matt is intense, ponderous, often brooding. He recasts the world on canvas and rock as only he sees it. Art leads the way. Art challenges, mocks and revalues Life. Life necessarily follows Art. If not, why have Art? An artistically arrogant dick.
Socioeconomically, Zack is new money minted upper middle class, still wondrously figuring out the possibilities of money. It affords him a platform to pursue creativity without the overhang of economic pressure. But, his craft has to deliver at some point to feed economic reality.
Matt coasts along on an income stream legacy. A life annuity. Old money modest aristocracy. Annoyances like mortgages are not in his lexicon. He can follow his artistic impulses to his heart's desire without the inconvenient distraction of economic reality.
Zack was married, and divorced five years ago. No children. He has no desire to remarry. He spends time between verdant Hampstead Heath in outer London, and Penzance at the jackboot tip of Cornwall. He relishes the romance of sailing in its struggle against the laws of nature. He fashions himself as a kind of ethical pirate of Penzance. He lives a writer's hermit life someplace in the far countryside whenever he is working on a novel. He has published with moderate success. At this time, he is in between novels, seeking inspiration for his elusive magnum opus. Maybe Matt will be the fountainhead?
Matt lives alone in a remote cliffside cottage, soaring above a cove, in the English south coast. A sort of wuthering heights staring down on a moor of sea. This is the cove that Zack is sailing to.
Matt's cottage is in the quintessential classic English style. Its interior has the cosy cottage ambience, but updated tastefully with modern amenities while retaining the rustic charm. The cottage comprises a living room, which spills out seamlessly to a patio, a garden extending all the way to the cliff edge, overlooking the sea. There is an open kitchenette, a dining area, three bedrooms, and a studio where Matt does his drawing, sculpting and photoshoots. The nearest home from the cottage is a mile away. A world unto itself, which is Matt's world of all possible worlds.
Matt has a bevy of girlfriends, but remains single. His independent eccentric artistic streak is at odds with the institution of marriage. His solitude lifestyle does not appeal to his girlfriends. They are initially enamoured of the austere romance of the Emily Brontësque isolation, but after a week or two of quietude, they ache for more animated stimulation.
Zack drops his sail. He motors gently into the cove. Chug, chug, chug. He moors his yacht at the ramshackle jetty. Will it hold his yacht in a tempest, he wonders?
Zack puts on his aviator sunshades. His spirit soars. He lugs his sausage of baggage up the dizzy winding cliff path to Matt's cottage. He feels invigorated. The air is so sharp, he can kiss it.
And there he is, perched precariously at the cliff edge overhang of his garden, ascertaining the far horizon, forehead wrinkled, eyes squinted sagely, hand gripping his paint brush with a vengeance, attacking his canvas.
***
Chapter 2: The Commission
Zack and Matt reconnect over the week.
They were both nineteen when they first met in uni. They last met when they were forty-two. They are now sixty-two.
They fall into an idyllic routine. Zack is in between novels. Matt is in between work commissions. It is summer. Matt doesn't say much. They have a cosmic connection that transcends perfunctory words.
There is a system to their idyll. They are both night people. They muse, philosophise, wine and weed deep into the night.
They rise at the crack of high noon. A ploughman's brunch.
They ride Matt's Harley, meandering the giddy corniche, to the village 3 miles away for their espresso fix. The village houses a minor tourist attraction which Matt has yet to figure out what.
They parse and ascertain the sprinkling of subconforming visitors and organised tourists milling at the village. Loud Americans. Impossibly nice Canadians. Zesty Latin Americans. Polite Japanese. Animated Chinese. Contemplative continentals. They have been tempted to pickup sweet young backpacked strays, but they think better of it.
They ride back. In the late afternoon, they sail in Zack's yacht, closing in on the wind, tacking to the far cape yonder. Then round back on a run, wind pressing on their backs.
Matt receives a commission notice from a renowned art museum. A study of mature femininity, in three art forms: Photography, Drawing and Sculpture. It feeds into an upcoming major international art exhibition, a marquee event, at the museum.
Matt reads the commission brief.
The same mature model across the three art forms. The model is to be in the fifty-five to sixty-five age range. She is to reflect the average mature woman in the age range who is relatable to the target audience at large. And at a more sublime level, the model epitomises her zeitgeist, the spirit of the era. Thus, a professional model is not a requirement, even though the museum will defer to the artist to choose the model as artist-model chemistry is key to the project.
The model's identity is to be artfully obscured. Her face in the photos is to be subtly obscured, darkened or shadowed. Being an international exhibition, the museum desires to universalise the mature femininity study across cultural divides.
The artworks are to be sensual, just short of erotic, but not lusty or lewd.
The artist is invited to envision an exhibition museum pathway that starts with the overarching aim and theme of the project, photography, meandering onto drawing, and then culminating in a compelling dramatic sculpture piece.
The identity of the artist will be published. The intellectual property rights belong to the artist.
Matt proceeds to source the model. He has five days to do this. The modeling work will be done in his home, in his studio, over a week.
Matt faces challenges. Models in that age range are typically married women who are wives and mothers. They have family responsibilities. They can't be away from their homes. The few who do not have family commitments feel uncomfortable with nude modeling, working and staying-in in a remote countryside location, in a cottage with a single male artist stranger. A lady with grown-up children offers to have her husband accompany her for the assignment, staying-in with her at Matt's cottage. Matt does not feel comfortable with the arrangement. The presence of her husband will inadvertently affect the modeling dynamics, potentially cramping the style of the model and the artist.
***
Chapter 3: A Model Sister
On the fourth day of the model sourcing, at wits end, Matt has a minor epiphany.
