FicWad

It was early October when Robert Simmons met the young Lucas Valentin. The exact date escapes Robert now, and he wishes he could remember. 

Lucas was a young French student who had only been living in London for about a month before he met Robert. He was freshly turned twenty years old and had been living in Marseilles with his rich family before taking the train over to England. His family had sent him overseas to improve his English and study the culture before returning to France, but Lucas himself just wanted to stay there, and explore the art and history buried in the city. He came across Robert in a small art shop in the back streets of Westminster, the French boy looking for decent charcoal pencils while Robert shopped for new watercolours. 

“Excusé-moi?" Robert ignored him at first, assuming that the soft and deep French words were being directed at someone other than him. He picked up a tube of burnt sienna and kept to himself. "You are a painter?” The voice that was very suddenly coming from close behind his shoulder made Robert jump, and he turned around quickly to face the boy who had spoken. He was taken aback, not used to being spoken to or approached like this in public. 

“Yes,” he replied a little hesitantly, looking over the boy that stood in front of him. He was about three, maybe four inches taller than Robert and had very pale blonde hair, a sort of flaxen shade that Robert began to liken to the colour of angel wings, with blue eyes, a muted and misty shade of blue that looked almost grey, like dusty sapphires. He was very light-skinned, almost translucent-looking, and had rosy and plump lips. He wore a creased white shirt buttoned up to the collar, a moth-eaten tweed jacket over that, and some dusty black jeans rolled up above his bare ankles, fitting him very tightly despite his skinny frame, with a leather satchel slung over one shoulder. Robert thought he looked something like a male model; he was very attractive in the sense that he was already seeming like a stereotypical pretty boy. He arched an eyebrow, before he turned back to looking at the racks of individual tubes of watercolour paint. He was very aware of the French boy hovering around behind him.

“What do you like to paint?” 

It was such a vast question that it almost aggravated Robert. He glanced over his shoulder, the stranger still visible in his peripheral vision. 

“What does it matter to you?” He countered, not meaning to be as rude as he made it sound. He was just confused. He didn’t really like it when people spoke to him, especially not just out of the blue like this. He was getting nervous very quickly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the French boy said, a hint of a small and shy smile on his large lips. “I’m very interested. I draw, I’ve never met a painter, before.” He spoke with very hesitant and odd English, thinking for a few seconds between every few words that he said. He was peering over Robert’s shoulder again at the tubes of paint he was already holding. Robert cleared his throat slightly, wanting to be polite, but still feeling very uncomfortable. 

“I paint a lot of things,” Robert began honestly, unsure where to actually start. “I like nature, I guess. And sometimes, landscapes. The city, you know.”

“Oh, oui. I understand,” the French boy replied, and he was smiling a little wider now. “That’s, interesting. I like to draw, uh, faces.” 

“That’s nice,” Robert muttered, and before he could try to confuse himself from the uncomfortable situation the French boy kept talking.

“I’m not very good,” the French boy said, and started to wring his hands a little. “But I do not want to do lessons. Do you do lessons?”

“I used to. But I don’t anymore, I like to teach myself.” Robert offered him a small smile. “What’s your name?” 

“Oh,” he replied, seeming to get flustered, and he tucked his tin of charcoal pencils under his arm before extending his right hand. His eyes seemed to flicker about the store as if he was trying to remember something. “Je- non, my name, my name is Lucas. Lucas Valentin.” He grinned, a little nervously, and Robert shook his hand briefly.

“Robert Simmons.”

“It’s nice to meet you,- Robert.” Lucas said his name very slowly, with the French pronunciation making it sound lighter, then there was a little pause before he spoke again. “Do you come to this shop often?”

“This is my favourite shop,” Robert said with a nod, and he was once again becoming nervous because small talk was taking over their conversation and he had no idea what to say. There was a slight lull there.

“Do you only paint with, uh, aquare-... Watercolour?” Lucas suddenly asked, looking slightly confused as he tried to differentiate the French and English words in his head. Robert cleared his throat slightly, and he shook his head.

“No. Only recently. I like oil paint better.”

“I do not know oil paint. C'est - eh, it's difficult.”

“But you need variety as an artist, don’t you?” Robert arched a coal-black eyebrow, and Lucas just grinned as if he had just been told one of the dark secrets of the universe. “You can’t just stick to one thing. You won’t develop.” There was another pause. “Do you mind if I go and pay for these?” Lucas looked at Robert with a blank expression which quickly developed into a quizzical frown. Robert realised that the French boy hadn't really understood him. He raised the tubes of paint he was holding and Lucas' eyes widened considerably.

“Oh, pardon,” Lucas murmured in French, and Robert stepped past him, placing his tubes of paint on the counter and waiting for the clerk to come back. Lucas followed him, and he let out a little sigh when he realised this. 

"Do you talk to every stranger you see?" Robert asked him suddenly, bemusement underlying his tone, and Lucas raised his eyebrows before he chuckled and shook his head.

"Non. Only the people that look interesting. Aussi, uh, the artists." He shrugged, looking around him at the shop as the clerk came and rang Robert's paint up on the register. As Robert paid more than he had anticipated for the paint, Lucas said something else. "Why do you like painting?" 

Robert scoffed, taking his paint and thanking the clerk before he was stepping aside so that Lucas could buy the pencils he had picked up. “I just enjoy it. I don't think I do it for any other reason. You should only ever do things if they make you happy. Maybe you would like painting.” He nodded at the charcoal pencils and Lucas laughed. His laugh was gentle and musical, like wind chimes, only lower and soft.

“Oh. I understand. Oui. I don’t know. Painting is – ‘ard." 
[Robert chuckled here with fondness at simply recalling Lucas’ way of missing out his h’s, like most Frenchmen do.]

“It doesn't matter. I think it's hard but that doesn't stop me from doing it. I'm not good at it.” Robert smiled, not even realising that he was waiting for Lucas to pay for his pencils before he actually left the shop. They left together.

“Well I’m not- I’m sure. Je ne sais pas.” Lucas said in confusion, wrinkling his angular nose and shaking his head. His hair fell into his eyes and he quickly swept it back.

“It was a joke,” Robert said. He lingered on the pavement, thinking desperately where to go. He looked at Lucas briefly, continuing his sentence. “I meant, not all artists are good at what they like to do.” Lucas nodded his eyes wide and ears pricking up behind his blonde hair, like a keen dog learning a new trick. “I like to paint and I do it because it makes me happy. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m very good at it.” Robert paused, already developing the habit of stopping to make sure Lucas understood. Robert loved talking about art- he wanted Lucas to understand him. He wanted Lucas to walk away from this conversation knowing something more, or liking Robert, at least; Robert didn’t know where these desires to educate or even socialise had come from. “Do you- Would you like to walk with me?” The slightly older man asked, gesturing across the road. “We could sit down somewhere and talk some more, if you like.”

“Oui, yes, of course,” Lucas said, smiling with enthusiasm. In fact, his whole body was practically bouncing and buzzing with excitement. Robert half-expected to see Lucas with a wagging tail behind him. “Yes, let’s do that. I like talking with you, you’re interesting.” If Lucas hadn’t been foreign with such slow English, Robert would have taken his simple words as a sarcastic remark. He said that a lot; interesting.

They crossed the road, Lucas almost running after Robert who walked quickly over the crossing. Catching up, Lucas ran a hand through his hair, glancing down at Robert several times. 

“I do not remember painting. I don't do it. the last time I painted was in school.” Robert turned to face the Frenchman with an arched eyebrow when he paused. "Is it different from drawing?" Robert widened his eyes, silently wondering if it had been a serious question. Lucas managed to interpret his expression, chuckling softly. “Non, non, I know the difference. I just want to know if- you get a different feeling. Doing it.”

“Oh,” Robert said, he laughing a little this time. “Yes. I mean, of course, there’s a totally different feeling that you get from it. To me, there’s more freedom. Do you feel free when you draw?” He glanced sideward as they resumed walking, and was surprised at the speed and confidence with which Lucas suddenly started to speak. He kept looking up at the Frenchman as he spoke, the pale October sun peeking from behind the clouds and reflecting off Lucas' angel feather coloured hair.

“I feel different,” he said, and started to gesture wildly with his hands, almost catching Robert in the face twice. “I feel like- like I’m flying. Ça plane pour moi, you know that?” Robert nodded; he knew the song and he knew what the title meant, and that’s as far as it went. “I feel like everything is okay and that I can do anything.” Lucas then seemingly started to blush, and he shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s like that.”

“No, that’s good,” Robert said, making a soft, pleased noise that sounded like a laugh in the back of his throat. He looked down at the pavement, watching their feet move along the street in a mismatched rhythm. He was silent for a few moments as the wind whipped through his hair, chilling him to the bone through his threadbare clothes for a few fractions of a second. He looked ahead of them, seeing a flock of pigeons flutter across the overcast sky, cars skidding and whirring between gusts of wind somewhere behind them. He smiled to himself. “That’s really good. It makes you feel powerful, doesn’t it?” Lucas nodded, once again returning to beaming at Robert, something he was already getting used to. “It makes me feel powerful, too. Like- Like I’m a weapon or something.” 

“Yes,” Lucas said softly, and for almost a minute they walked along a quieter street in silence, the sound of cars and people softening into the distance but never being too far away, the sun still too weak to cast shadows of the tall buildings onto the road. Lucas was smiling to himself, nodding a little. “Like a weapon.”

Robert had his mind halfway into somewhere else by now, daydreaming. 

“It makes me happier than anything else,” he said. It was almost as if he was talking to himself, ignoring or oblivious to Lucas' presence. He wandered aimlessly, Lucas blindly following. He had a stupid smile on his face, as small as it might have been, the kind of smile one would make if they were trying to hide their immense joy in a not so joyous situation. “Like I get so warm inside when I paint. I can see colours making images in front of me, I can smell and taste all the feelings I'm creating and even if it’s a bad painting it’s beautiful to me because it’s something that my mind thought would be a good idea and I’m creating it. I just-…” He stopped, before laughing and rubbing a hand over his face. “I love it. Nothing’s ever really felt that empowering or had that effect on me.” He ducked his head, watching their feet on the pavement again. Lucas' feet were bigger than his. He wasn't wearing any socks. The Frenchman was grinning to himself and he spoke softly after a few seconds. 

“You are so passionate,” he marvelled, his deep accent sounding strange when it was hushed in such an awed way. “It’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone that talks of art like you do. It’s very interesting.” He was nodding quickly along with the words that he spoke. “A lot of people, dans ma ville, thought I was, eh, weird. The French love art, is that what everyone else thinks?” Robert gave a little nod. “They don’t.”

“Some of the boys at my school thought I was-... Well, they didn’t like me because I did drawings.”

“Because you were different,” Robert said softly, and Lucas nodded. Robert understood almost too well what Lucas was saying.

“Ah! But you, you are different too,” the French boy said, once again wearing his childish, victorious smile. “Even, different from my art teachers. They were- old, and- eh, enneyeux.” 

“Boring?” Robert asked, racking his brains for his minute French knowledge when Lucas didn’t correct the word into English. Lucas laughed and nodded and continued to speak.

“I think artists were old all the time,” the Frenchman laughed, and Robert smiled fondly. "All the artists are old."

“Did you think you couldn’t be an artist until you were old?” Robert was trying not to snicker, but figured it was okay seeing as Lucas was laughing too with him.

“Oui- Yes!” Lucas said loudly, and was laughing loudly now. “Alors, I was still different. But, uh, ma famille stopped me from doing art because they wanted me to get a job. And- I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t want a job.”

“You wanted to keep drawing,” Robert finished for him. A few moments of silence settled between them as they walked, almost blindly, Robert suddenly feeling outside himself because he was so shocked that he was having an intelligent and near-comfortable conversation with someone who, five minutes ago, had been an absolute stranger.

"You know, Van Gogh was only thirty-seven when he died," Robert said, his lips pulling up at the corners. "That's not that old."

"Oui, but Monet was, eh... Quatre-vingt... Six... He was eighty-six."

"Pfft," Robert remarked, looking up at the sky to see it brightening up a little, the clouds no longer looking so dark as if a storm were on the way, but the sun had again gone back into hiding. 

"Et, Rembrant was, eh, old." Lucas let out a soft bubbly giggle.

"Oh, please," Robert groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. They turned a corner, the sound of cars getting a little louder as they came out of that quiet street. "That doesn't mean anything. Age isn't important when it comes to art. How old are you, anyway?" 

"Vingt ans."

"Sorry?"

"Oh! Pardon. Uh, twenty."

The two men eventually came to a café, one that Robert had not even realised he had been heading for. He shook his head before looking at Lucas with a little smile, feeling oddly comfortable around the mysterious young man. 

“Du café?” He said with a slight quirk of his brows, sending Lucas into an almost theatrical bought of high-pitched and slightly nasal laughter because his French accent barely even sounded like one. He nodded, though, and the two stepped inside the café before resuming their conversation. Robert had quickly given up that thinking about how out of character this was for him, sitting down and talking with a complete stranger. But really, artists were never strangers to each other. They always had one thing in common and that would never change. He tried to hold onto that.

“My teacher at school said I would be not so good artist,” Lucas said almost matter-of-factly while Robert ordered them a latté each with only half his divided attention. Robert cocked an eyebrow once again, looking over at Lucas sceptically. 

“That’s never a wise thing to say to a student about what they want to study,” he said, being reminded of the one haunting thing said to him by Mr Evans, the maths teacher, all those years ago. Lucas nodded in agreement. 

“He said I dreamed things too much,” Lucas started, before Robert let out a strange, unattractive and very loud snort of laughter. He covered his mouth apologetically, laughing softly, leaving Lucas looking very confused. "Qu’est ce que..?”

“I’m sorry,” Robert said innocently, pursing his lips to try and stop the laughter from getting worse. “I’m sorry but that is just- Such a terrible thing to say. It’s ridiculous. You can’t say that an artist dreams too much. Art is almost entirely made up of dreams. That’s – It’s crazy.”

Lucas was still looking rather shocked from Robert’s short, sudden outburst. 

“Oui, you’re right,” he said, and Robert took their coffees from the counter, ushering the French boy over to a small table right by the window. They sat down opposite each other, and Robert spoke as he began to rip open sachets of sugar and empty them into his coffee. 

“Most of the time it’s not even actual dreams; but it’s your imagination. Hardly any of the things that I paint actually exist, or I’ve never seen them before; I see them in my head. That’s still dreaming. And sometimes I paint things that I want, places I want to go, and that’s dreaming too. And let me tell you something, Lucas.” Lucas' eyes were wide once again, interested, listening to Robert’s philosophies intently - that and, of course, he could only understand fragments of the sentences. “Artist or not, nobody can dream too much. Dreams are the realities that normal people don’t grasp because they’re told that they’re dreams. They get disillusioned and think that their day jobs are reality. No. They’re realistic dreams.” Robert winked, and though Lucas looked confused he carried on, encouraged by the excited glint behind the clouded blue of the Frenchman’s eyes. 

“That’s why artists have an advantage,” Robert said. “We live in our dreams. Trust me, kid- You can’t dream too much.” He stopped and sipped his coffee, noticing that Lucas was staring at him with utter bewilderment. 

“Are you saying...Uh..." he searched for the right words, "that we are, good, more good than other people?” Lucas asked after a few moments of staring quizzically at Robert, almost looking through him. “Parce-que... we’re artists?”

“Yes. We can get lost in our dreams. We’re free. Art makes us free.” Robert grinned, like he had just won an uphill battle, or cracked an unbeatable code. 

“So… Normal people,” Lucas said, whispering now, like he didn’t want the normal people to hear and get offended because they were suddenly the different ones. “They’re prisoners? Because they don’t accept art… Into their lives? They’re slaves?” 

Robert laughed triumphantly, slamming his palm down on the table, the sound being louder than he had intended and startling everyone in the café, including Lucas, who jumped in his seat. Robert pursed his lips once again, glancing at the people who were staring at him before he continued to speak anyway, not caring about all the normal people looking at them. Robert didn’t care about them. He was an artist. 

“Exactly,” he whispered back to Lucas, who then grinned straight back at him. “See. You’ve got something up there in that blonde head of yours.”

“You are amazing,” Lucas said, running his long and bony fingers through his pale hair before curling them around his coffee cup, sipping from it. He spoke again when he set it back on the table. “I have never met someone with- With a mind like yours. It's," he paused, blindly waving his hands around as he tried to think of the right word. After a few seconds he settled for, "magnifique.” He laughed, making Robert laugh with him in the middle of a mouthful of his coffee. 

“I’m just being honest,” he replied, and he folded his hands on the table, leaning closer. “I think you need to look at yourself differently if you’re an artist. I don’t think you should let people think that you’re just different from them.”

“Pardon?”

“I mean, that you should see yourself as a different kind of person. You’re not even a person. You’re an artist. You’re almost like a higher being." Lucas' confused frown grew deeper and Robert smiled a lopsided smile. "Like gods," he defined. "Normal people, the ones without art- they’re the slaves. You see?” Lucas nodded briefly. “It’s like they’ve had chains around their neck since birth, and we managed to break out of ours. Did you ever hear Plato's Cave Allegory?" Lucas bit his lip and then shook his head, a pained and puzzled expression on his face, his frown deepening. "Never mind. What I'm trying to say is that we see things differently and I think we should consider them separate from us; not in a bad way, necessarily, I'm not trying to cause a segregation here. But we think so differently. And Lucas, do you know what?”

Lucas was staring again, looking puzzled by the crazy ideas and dauntingly long English words, his lips parted as if he were just about to gasp, his expression likening to that of someone staring into the face of God.

“Quoi?” His voice was hushed again, his lips barely moving. 

“I think they’re scared of us. Normal people. The government. Everyone else. I think they’re scared of us because they know just what we can do. We can dream. We can change lives with our art.” 

There were a few, yet seemingly very long moments of silence. Lucas was silent partly because he was trying to turn everything Robert had just said into French so that he could understand it fully, but also because what he could understand of it already made so much sense that it was almost causing him visible pain. If he were to really think about it, and because of Robert he was thinking hard about it now, people were scared of art. People turned a blind eye to it because they didn’t understand, that was what he had thought before. But now he knew, almost for certain, that people didn’t want to acknowledge the greatness of art because, once, they had underestimated its power. He realised now a reason that was maybe behind his parents' lack of enthusiasm towards his studies. Because they couldn't understand it, and they were scared of it. To Robert, art had the strength to move an entire planet, if you were going to compare it that way. Art could start wars. Art had the power to get someone killed. And people ignored it because they were afraid that, if they gave it too much attention, it would thrive.

Art could dominate all things. Art could take over the world if the normal people let it.

And Lucas pondered on this as he looked at Robert. Robert had just changed his life because he had a way of looking at things that Lucas had never even considered, heard about, or could have possibly imagined. Lucas wasn't sure about God - his parents were Catholic and he had been to church but, if there was a God, he had sent Robert as some kind of a prophet. Robert was put there to guide Lucas, to teach him. Lucas looked up at Robert again, almost spilling his coffee over himself in the midst of his thoughts. He could hear Robert somewhere in the distance, talking to him, asking if he was okay, but Lucas was more than okay. He felt enlightened. He smiled, setting down his coffee cup and folding his hands on the table the way Robert had.

"Do you think, we could do that? Change the world?"