End of Baling School of Art & 1969 Graphics Diploma Show

Wandering through Kew's beautiful Mediterranean Gardens, Rosemary remembered the time she had met Freddie's Dad, and how that meeting had given her a new perspective on his background. It had occurred during their student Graphics Show in June 1969; the chaotic event had been a real hoot, with everyone putting up the best work from their portfolios and fretting about the style of their individual presentations. But Freddie had been worried—had he got enough completed projects to get the Baling School of Art Technical Diploma? When it came to the day for putting up the displays for the External examiners to review, Freddie realised early in the morning that half his work was still at his parents' house, near Feltham. 'Don't worry; we can collect it now in my van,' Rosemary had suggested. Without delay, they drove to his parents' home and Freddie had invited her in. 'Mum's out...wait in the hall while I get my stuff from my room...Oh, hi dad! I forgot my stuff for college ...this is Rosemary... she's giving me a lift.' Freddie's father did not look impressed as he nodded towards her; she was surprised to see him wearing a Sherwani-style outfit; it had made him appear imposingly regal—both traditional and cosmopolitan. After less than an hour they had returned to college and got his work up on the walls, as if nothing out of the or dinar}¹ had happened that morning. Freddie's work was on display in the show but neither his work nor Rosemary's was the strongest in their year. 'I love your Wilfred Owen illustrations" Freddie had commented on her figurative work, once they were back in the Baling studios. Freddie had admired the detail; '...looks like something made long ago—a metaphor about life and death?' he had mused. 'But why did you do all that work on "dog-food packaging"?' he had added disparagingly. TVE GOT TO HAVE SOME COMMERCIAL STUFF SO I CAN GET A JOB,' Rosemary had yelled back at him, not realising how pent up her feelings had become that day. 'Isn't that what we're here for?' It had been sink or swim time for her—she had to find paid commercial design work as soon as the term ended, so having a 'cross section' of marketable styles was crucial, despite the popularity of Pop and Psychedelic Design at that time. Freddie, on the other hand, knew that he wasn't going to need a job in Graphics anyway...

Thinking back to that seemingly critical time as she continued her walk through Kew Gardens, Rosemary thought that her best work had probably been a set of four posters advertising a V&A Travelling Exhibition; Freddie had posed for the drawing of 'the face'of a Gothic Woodcarving in one of them. The print making tutor at Ealing, Celestino Valenti, had advised a rainbow tint to be superimposed over the lithographs. It had been the series that everyone liked in her portfolio, and soon after the Diploma Show it was the piece that got her her first job, for Nuffield Educational Graphics, based in Bloomsbury, between September 1969 and June 1970.

'Not for me sweetie-pie...' Freddie had said, referring to her comment about getting a job, I've got other fish to fry as soon as we're out of here...I'm starving...let's see if the canteen is open.' And it was true; so long as Freddie could tell his parents that he'd passed the course, he could then do as he pleased and focus on his music.

On the way downstairs to get some food they bumped into his musician friends again. 'Rehearsal at two downstairs...don't be late.' She had no idea how he could be so confident about his chances of earning a living, since he was seldom seen to do anything other than sing, no matter where he was. Whilst the examiners were marking the Graphics Diploma candidates in the second floor studios at Ealing, Rosemary and Freddie had their last ever meal in the college canteen, then descended to the Main Hall so Freddie could hold a final jamming session there. Rosemary didn't know the names of all the musicians who were with them, but the sound was so good, that she was instantly able to switch off from the earlier part of the day and admire the vocals. Freddie's voice was more powerful than ever, especially when harmonising with the brilliant vocalist Tim Staff el. After an hour Freddie strolled down from the stage and said vaguely, 'I want a new scarf...where can I get one before tonight?' 'Carnaby Street, of course,' Rosemary had replied. 'Can we go there now, in your van? ' he had enquired. Freddie was already projecting himself into his post-student role and was focused only on what he'd wear for his next performance. Rosemary recalled how they had got to the shops off Regent Street ten minutes before closing time, so they had rushed round considering everything in sight: within minutes Freddie got a bargain 19305 Art Deco brown and white silk scarf. Rosemary had spotted a Boer War military jacket earlier that week, in Liberty, which she thought she might treat Freddie to, if he liked it. The store had closed by then, so she simply described it to him; unsurprisingly, he had turned his nose up at it: 'What do you think I am, a raving bloody queen¹?' he had jeered, repeating one of his favourite expressions. 'Anyway, you've got to be taller than five foot ten to carry that off!' Freddie had then gone home on the tube, or at least that's where he'd said he was going: Rosemary had gone to the Westbourne Grove flat to wait for Albert, whose whereabouts, as always, were a mystery to everyone except himself.

It had been a difficult transition for Rosemary; she had not planned to go to any of the end of year student parties that had been mentioned earlier that week. Mien she eventually got back home she found she was too exhausted to do anything but go straight to bed. But she was not sad; she knew that the following day would be the start of a whole new era—the long awaited world of work. She already had a Nuffield Foundation interview coming up that week, and just had to make one last visit to Ealing to collect her sketchbooks and portfolios from the studios.

Soon after that, Freddie, to whom clothes were second only to music, had started a part-time job at a stall in Kensington Market.

More positive memories of her Ealing experience were those times when art and design had been sublimely merged as one. She fondly recalled one of many trips to the Victoria and Albert Museum: she had gone to see the Ballet Designs and Illustrations: 1581-1940 Exhibition, which she had come across by chance whilst researching imagery for her poster designs in lithography for her Travelling Exhibitions series. She recalled her delight at shouing Freddie the catalogue she had purchased there, a few months earlier, before the rush towards the Diploma show. He had suddenly become entranced at the reproduced images and the names attached to them and gasped: 'Bakst; Nijinsky: Balanchine: Diaghilev...the names sound so delicious—so are the costumes! God, there's so much androgyny here...I'm going to swoon, DARLING!..catch me in your arms as I faint...it's all too perfect ...and so CAMP!' And there and then Freddie had flounced into Rosemary's arms, mimicking a ballerina! Looking through some library books that same afternoon, Freddie had become intoxicated all over again with images of Nijinsky's Scheherazade and Diaghilev's L'Apres-Midi D'Un Faune costumes; their folds created a type of vortex around the belly and the hip that made the body appear to float on its own drapery, as if in a cloud. The footnote in the catalogue revealed: "The costumes endowed the male with female contours." Freddie later remarked that he thought it reminded him of rainbows, in so far as he had found it all so totally sublime as to be almost in the realms of the DIVINE! He had been instantly captivated by these images in a way she had not seen before. Freddie, in playful mood, had pretended to pass out, collapsing onto the studio floor, having fallen through her arms again, which could not take his weight. 'Dancing in that gear must have really challenged male-female boundary stuff, even in the theatre!' he'd commented to the whole studio, quickly getting up off the floor and dusting himself down.

Maybe it was because they had chanced upon them, but Freddie had been equally ecstatic a moment later about another catalogue Rosemary had taken out of the college library, on Eadward Muybridge photographs of nude male wrestlers. What Freddie had said about that series of images was not fit to be repeated—his comments were that outrageous! She just hoped the other students in the studio had not been listening too closely!

Besides, the whole exchange had again been a play for time, as far as Rosemary was concerned. She had another agenda that she needed to find the right moment to bring up. Rosemary was furtively waiting to tell Freddie about a holiday abroad that she was starting to save up for, although she wasn't going until July 1070. After a long silent interlude, trying to be nonchalant, she said casually, 'I'm thinking of going to Moscow and Leningrad next year for the Lenin Centenary: do you want to come? We could see Russian Ballet for real.' Somehow Rosemary knew even before she'd said it that Freddie wasn't remotely interested in Left Wing ideology or going to Moscow, even with the Russian Ballet connection, so she hadn't expected him to be enthusiastic about her plans. Apart from the obvious cultural and historic attractions, Rosemary was especially looking for a new role for women; perhaps she would be inspired in Russia? Could there exist a way of life that harmonised the sensual with the intellectual? In the permissive culture of London, it seemed that it was only women who had to choose between one and the other, as well as between maternity or wage-slaving, among a dozen or so other disparate polarities.

To date, Rosemary had experienced herself only as 'arty' and sensual —and only to the extent to which it supported male expectations of the day. Could there be some other model for women? Only the Left might provide an answer; her task, therefore, had become to investigate from all sides—first hand! 'I just can't do with all that political stuff you've taken up with—I'm too busy with rehearsals, anyway,' Freddie had returned dispassionately as they left the studio for the day. But whilst Freddie was delighted to discover the androgyny of Russian dance, which for him was a reminder of his Zoroastrian upbringing and was in accord with that ideology's view of "cosmic wisdom", he was in no mood to consider departing from his music or the world of the performance. He had said that all that stuff about androgyny was part of his cultural heritage, and Rosemary remained fascinated by the ease with which he addressed the whole issue.

As they had walked away down the corridor at college, she remembered how he had once told her about the alchemical processes of glassmaking: the way the ashes and sand could be transformed through fire into a new material. It was perhaps a chemical process analogous to music, performance and dance! Metaphorically, these were akin to Freddie's own "special ingredients": this amalgam would be something that would eventually transform him—all he needed for this to happen was for him to keep going as he was... "Distractions" such as catalogues, galleries, films and even theatre could only be seen as transitory 'glimpsed experiences'.

So, taking two weeks out of his familiar London domain was unthinkable for Freddie! For Rosemary, however, the planned Russian trip was of major importance—with or without Freddie. But it wasn't going to be all fun, since nobody else she knew wanted to go there either! In fact, everyone she mentioned it to thought she must be mad to want to go anywhere near 'that country' at all. There had been an even longer pause from Freddie before he added: 'Anyway, I hate Communism: isn't that about imposing boundaries....it's not about LIBERTY at all ....and I hate Revolutions, even more.' he had sneered. She thought it best not to mention Russia ever again.

But a moment later, with his nose almost pressed against the plate glass of an exit door, on the way out of college, making a silly face just to get her to laugh, he was in a better mood: 'The world needs more Nijinskys', he cooed, as he mimed a pirouette and danced out into the street. Rosemary supposed he was thinking about the costumes he'd just seen in the Ballet catalogue; and she guessed right that he would make light of her "flirtation with communism', because there were a lot of related issues there that he simply didn't want to address. He had wandered off to mimic a momentary dance-twist, before returning to Rosemary in the college car park, to get a lift in her van; he never liked talk about her going away, even if it was more than a year in the future.

In the Mini-Van the topic returned to music. Rosemary knew that Freddie had listened to a lot of Frank Zappa (it was one of the first things they'd talked about—only because Zappa was reputed to have been a "fags and coffee" man who took no hard drugs!). And he had long enthused about Zappa's and Beefheart's unromantic lyrics with their caustic pastiches. Freddie was fascinated by the way writing lyrics could be both impersonal as well as personal, but most of all he loved the way Zappa flouted male dress-codes, extreme even by the standards of that crazy, anything-goes period. To him they just said 'Fuck-off! I'm doing my own thing..."Then he got really enthusiastic: 'Tell you why I love it most...it's inspired by reality—no romantic bollocks! It's all androgynous themes anyway—take the name Mothers of Invention for starters. But that was American stuff, with some weird stuff about Timothy Leary, which I hate...but Hove the Electricity track and all of Hot Rats.' 'God, the great divide between American and European stuff! ' Rosemary thought, as she drove and he carried on, as if in a monologue.

Because talking about contemporary music always perked Freddie up she hoped they'd get to their next venues without any more friction. But just beneath their fun and laughter they were entering the 'fragile zone', to do with the future of their relationship. 'God', she had thought, 'was there no end to this 'mission?'. His mission, and hers, appeared to collide, but wasn't that all an illusion? Did their different agendas have to permeate everything they did, all the time? Sometimes she felt she just couldn't take any more, but couldn't bring herself to say so. In retrospect, this was probably the first time she had really said to herself: 'How long can I carry on with this relationship—I'm not even at the centre of it!'In the ensuing silence Freddie sensed all was not well, and attempted to resume their afternoon conversation: 'I think those Russian dancers were all homosexuals...' he ventured, matter of factly, nudging up to her coyly. But Rosemary hadn't been in the mood for that sort of discussion at that moment: she thought only, '...Oh my God, perhaps we really are reaching the end of the road.'; she had finally become emotionally drained and despondent: but she knew too that despite all of the contradictions, she was not yet ready to leave him.

Back in the here and now, Rosemary said to herself that there was the rest of the day at Kew Gardens to revisit the past eighteen months or so; she had a good couple of hours ahead of her to go over the strengths and weaknesses of that period together, and what they had really been about.

She was making some headway, getting to grips with what had happened, and now she needed a break. She pulled out the sketchbook she always carried with her, and began to draw, forgetting everything else, for a while.