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in large, unwieldy italics the words FOXY LADY.
    Sheba understood, more or less straightaway, that she was the foxy lady in question, that the picture was intended as a portrait, and that it had been drawn by the blond-haired boy from the previous week’s H.C. She was not alarmed. On the contrary, she was pleased and rather flattered. In the brutal atmosphere of St. George’s, the gesture struck her as eccentrically innocent. She didn’t seek Connolly out to thank him for the drawing. She assumed that, since he had sent it anonymously,
any acknowledgement on her part would embarrass him. But she expected that he would, sooner or later, make some approach to her. And sure enough, one day shortly before the half-term break, she found him dawdling outside her studio as she was leaving for lunch.
    Sheba remembers Connolly being poorly dressed for the weather. It was a blowy October day, and he wore only a T-shirt and a flimsy cotton jacket. When he lifted the T-shirt to scratch absentmindedly at his belly, Sheba saw how his pelvic bone jutted out, creating a wide, shallow cavity just above his groin. She had forgotten that about young men’s bodies, she says.
    “Did you get that picture, then?” Connolly asked.
    “What?” she said, feigning surprise. “You mean it was from you?”
    Connolly allowed, coyly, that this might be the case.
    Sheba told him it was a lovely picture and that, if he really had drawn it, he ought to have signed it. “Wait a minute,” she said. She unlocked the door and went back into the studio, where she took the drawing out from the bottom drawer of her desk. “Why don’t you sign it for me now?” she asked.
    Connolly, who was still standing in the doorway, looked at her uncertainly. “Why, Miss?” he asked.
    Sheba laughed. “No reason. I just thought it would be nice. You don’t have to. But usually artists like to take credit for their work.”
    Connolly came over to the desk and looked at the drawing. It was not as good as some of the other things he had done, he told her. He couldn’t do hands. Sheba agreed that hands were very hard and went on to utter some encouraging words about the value of practice and of studying life models. At a certain point, she noticed him gazing at her own hands. She was shy,
she recalls, because they were so rough and unkempt. She put the picture down and folded her arms. “I had a word with Mr. Mawson about changing your timetable,” she said. “Apparently it’s not as easy as I thought.” Connolly nodded, unsurprised. “But I haven’t given up,” she added quickly. “I’m definitely going to keep trying, and in the meantime the most important thing is for you to keep drawing.”
    There was a short silence. Then Connolly confessed hesitantly that his picture had been intended as a portrait of her. Sheba nodded and told him that she had guessed as much. The boy became flustered and began to stammer. In a clumsy attempt to put him at his ease, Sheba made a joking comment about the generous bosom he had given her. “Wishful thinking,” she said. But this only exacerbated the boy’s embarrassment. He turned quite purple, apparently, and did not say anything for a long time.
    Sheba was tickled by this episode. It was a novelty, she says, to be so candidly admired. When she first told me this, I remember expressing some incredulity. I could believe that Richard’s affection might have grown complacent over the years, or perhaps just so reliable as not to count. But surely she wasn’t suggesting that she had been lacking admirers before Connolly? Sheba, who made the men in the St. George’s staff room gaga with her flimsy blouses? No, she insisted. That was quite different. There had always been men who made furtive google eyes at her, men who made it clear that they found her attractive. But no one, before Connolly, had ever truly pursued her. She used to think it was out of respect for her having a husband. But it had to have been something