Ceramics for Beginners by Claire Thomson

(This story features in Lunate vol. 1)

Block of six lessons, no experience necessary: £60.

That’s only £10 an hour. Which is only 50p more than I earn now and so I can justify this, I think, when I see the advert on Facebook. Does this mean that the tutors earn less than this? Maybe they sell these at a loss. Get you hooked, back for more. Soon, you’re paying through the nose for a hit.

Not funny, Man says.

Haha, I say.

Then we share a bottle of wine and we call it a nice evening. Man printed the voucher out for me at work. Man remembers the names of my friends’ mothers and plays the saxophone on Sunday afternoons but is shy about anybody hearing him, and most of all anyone from the office finding out.

It’s a nice hobby for you, he says, as I kiss him goodbye before my first class.

It might not be a hobby, I think. I might be a very good potter actually. I take a tote bag with an artist’s name on it to what used to be a garage for my lesson and I hope somebody might tell me they like her too so I can experience a first conversation with somebody that is not about public transport.

A gentle bearded man demonstrates first and we gather round to watch the clay evolve at the mercy of his hands. His pressure opens up its curve. Two twitches of his fingers create a lip. We don’t have to try this, he says. Only if we’re feeling brave.

A lump of clay is on the wheel that I know is mine because there is a nice pink post-it with my name misspelled on it telling me so. I pin a name badge in the same pink to my jumper, but I add the E where it should be. I hope nobody will mind. I sit at the wheel and it turns, as he said it would. I move my hands and the clay moves with them. It spins in a way which feels at once like tactile peace and like I am on the edge of chaos. GEORGIA at the next station has had some kind of disaster and lumps of clay are now dotted around her feet.

Bearded Man hovers over me and tells me my attempt is not bad for a beginner and then he pats GEORGIA’S shoulder and he tells her it happens all the time.

My pot is looking something like a pot now and if I am honest, GEORGIA’S failure has emboldened me. So I do it. I push in where I think we were told to and release my fingers when it feels right and there it is. Something resembling a lip. I could pour things from this. I could store flowers in it or I could give it as a gift to somebody who likes me just enough so that they could never get rid of it seeing as my own two hands made it.

The instructor picks what I have made up very gently. I am disappointed by how small it looks but I tell myself his hands are very big and I must remember perspective. He tells me it is lovely and he can’t believe it is my first time. It is a relief I am good at this. The £60 is non-refundable and the thought of sitting in a room for six hours doing something I am bad at makes my skin itch.

Collect your creations in two days! He shouts from the front of the class and we file out, thanking him and smiling.

The next day I go to the shop across from work that sells thin hardbacks about the Royal Family and vats of acrylic paint for cheap. Between a jigsaw puzzle and a set of 60 coloured pencils, I find a lump of clay. Air dry, no fire. I put it in my locker before my shift and tie up my hair.

I do the aubergines first. I carry through cardboard crates of them and unwrap them, revealing uneven oval jewels. I turn them so that they face the same way, and the evenness is calming. I use my hands and hope for symmetry to make things here as nice as possible and that is as much as I can hope for. Man tells me this sounds depressing and that I am more than that and I tell him that nobody is, really. And anyway, I tell him, creating order is peaceful.

I roll out a little blob of clay on the kitchen table. I pinch the top slightly and round out the bottom with a fingertip. I add a stalk to the end. It is lovely, I think. And if Man asks why when he gets home, I will tell him with confidence that it is important to elevate the everyday to something like art. To be intentional about how we live and look. But I also just like the way the clay feels in my hands and I like that when I peel my fingers from its moist and dusty skin, I leave fingerprints behind. Man might prefer that answer.

We painted our kitchen apple green at the start of the year. Haven’t told Landlord yet but if anything we have added to the flat’s value, in all likelihood accelerating our own eviction, so he should be pleased. The mug I drink white wine from now still bears paint flecks.

After I drain the mug, I turn my attention to its form. I carefully copy its handle in miniature and fix it to a stout cylinder of clay on the table. Then I shape the bananas in the fruit bowl, then the tin of tomatoes left out when I thought I could be bothered to make pasta sauce and then the supermarket jar when I decided I could not. I put the empty bottle in the recycling bin and go to bed early. Maybe we will get a cat.

The sheets feel like his salary. You can tell they cost a lot because they will never be without wrinkles. When I tell him this he tells me they were not that expensive and that really, for an adult, he does not earn that much. I must have looked hurt and he told me he didn’t mean anything by that and it wasn’t my fault proper work was underpaid. And he looked like he did try to believe in what he was saying. But it is still true that he won’t let us eat toast on these sheets.

Our next class is on hand building. Less impressive than the wheel, but more decorative, Bearded Man tells me. This week GEORGIA excels and I am livid.

I hover at the end of class and show him my cup. He is holding out his huge pink palm and I drop it in and then he is smiling and leaning his head back and laughing and the wires of his beard shudder like disturbed grass.

Lovely. He says. Oh so lovely. You should paint it. Proper wee doll’s house piece. No, more like a diorama thing. There’s an artfulness to it.

An artfulness—this is all I have ever wanted to hear.

Later, I return to the shop and take home paint and brushes. I have willfully forgotten that I used to paint and that I enjoyed it. But I could not always make things look exactly as I wanted. Brushes fought back, I felt.

I mix the colours and I make the aubergine lilac, more gentle that way. This is up to me. The cup keeps its shade of blue. I resolve to shape myself, too, in an image of how I wish things might be. So I do, while Man is at a party I wish I wanted to go to.

Soon, I am coming together nicely. This me has longer hair and when I make the fingers that are uneven but that does not matter because the fourth of my left hand has a ring on it and this means that Man and I are going to live happily ever after. My head is the hardest bit to get right and this is not a surprise to me. But I look nicer than I hoped I could make myself. I lay myself down on the table to dry and I begin to make Him.

He takes a long time to make because he needs to be as close to perfect as I can make Him. By the time I have made his long legs and the chest which Man wishes were broader, Man is home and asks what I am doing. I tell Man and he smiles and says I am getting so good and kisses my head before he goes to bed.

I lay Him to dry next to me on the table and crawl in next to Man. In bed, I make a mental list of other things we will need to be happy. Plant, ideally monstera. Cat, ideally tabby. Crockery that doesn’t match but in a way that tells the friends who come for dinner that we have thought about what we’ve ethically acquired.

Three days later we are really dry and make satisfying tapping noises when I riskily test our strength, first individually and then together, by knocking us gently against the table. And after a shift when it is 25 degrees outside and people think they are being kind when they grimace and say it is a shame to be stuck inside on a day like this and carry their tins of lager out of the door and to the park, I give us colour.

I make my hair blonde with no roots and my jeans are blue and my top is black with white polka dots which are hard not to smudge. His hair is as close to its honey as I can manage and His shirt is white and His jeans are bluer than mine.

The lilac aubergine is near his hand because He is making us a curry with it and with peas and fresh tomatoes and fluffy rice on the side. He is following instructions from a hardback cookbook I bought us for an anniversary. It has a beautiful orange cover and micro memoirs about the food are set in italics above the instructions.

I am in the living room, relaxing, because I worked a few hours extra in a job which is both emotionally fulfilling and well paid and He has come home early because He has spoken to his boss about His need for a better work life balance.

I make Cat not long after, when we have the stability we need to look after something outside of ourselves. I make a scratching post and a litter tray and a ball with a bell in it and it takes so long to get the coils on the post and the bell in the ball, but it is worth it because it means I can take a small creature into my life and make it what I think is happy.

Then He turns around to me and He says shall we.

And I say well we might as well because nobody ever regrets it, do they?

No, He says. It’s the best thing they do with their lives.

And I make Baby and it is hard to make something so small with so many details. I don’t know how something so small can contain the whole world, but it does. Baby’s toes amaze me especially. They are so fat and intelligent. I am amazed we have the skill to make something so delicate but so strong. We’ve learned quickly, I say.

Yeah, we have. He says.

Cat does not share our enthusiasm. It is Tuesday night and cracks appear where the lines I painted which mean he can be called a Tabby were. I pipe glue in the fissures and hold him together while they set. I look in Cat’s green eyes and tell him not to worry. I tell Cat that I love it just as much as I did before. Maybe more even, by the simple fact of the small thing with intricate toes having made my heart so much bigger.

But I am tired. I am so tired and my limbs are fragile. They have thinned, I think, and I dropped Cat. Cat’s tail snaps off and its shards settle into a film on the water bowl. I cannot look at Cat and I run as quickly as my frail legs allow to the bathroom. I slide the lock. I hear Him click his tongue and soothe Cat and I am grateful. I will be too nervous to hold Cat again.

The next day Cat breaks the monstera we keep in the fireplace to give it some sort of function. Shards of green all over the floor. I bend down, cracking. But only a little.

Don’t worry, He says. The holes were the point anyway. Easily fixed. But He is frowning.

Cat watches us mending it with the same tube of glue we used for him. Cat swishes his fat tail. Crack, crack, crack.

Careful, Cat. He warns.

I hear Baby moving in the crib I hand built. Glazed peach for neutrality. It moves more than I expected it to and it cries and it cries. But this is what I made and what I wanted.

There are cracks in the joints of the crib. I can’t have used enough slip or scored properly or just been good enough. It slopes downwards at the bottom. He is cracking too, at the wrists mainly. It is a struggle now for Him to pick up Baby or Cat or to take my hand. He will not let me fix Him.

Haha how the roles have reversed, I say, and He does not laugh. His jeans have faded.

In the morning, I go slowly to the kitchen and try to ignore the dust my footsteps leave behind. There is Cat. A pile of striped shards on the tiled floor. I scream and He comes quickly and there is no surprise on His face.

He tells me He is sorry and it wasn’t my fault and He tries His best to hold me but I can feel He is brittle.

And soon, He crumbles too. His hands go first which stings because I spent so long on those fingers. When they go, he says he had nothing to hold me or Baby with. Nothing to offer us. And then he went. It happened in the bath. I told him we are not waterproof because I cannot afford to pay Bearded Man for kiln space or time or however they bill these things, anyway. So I suppose it is my fault.

I cannot make things look exactly as I want to or make joins strong enough to stand life’s surges. It was only a beginners’ class, I remind myself. But I am good enough to make something to show myself what is true. I sweep us all into the bin and close the lid.

An artfulness, he said.

I leave Man’s flat and I go to work.

Later, I will buy a canvas.

Claire Thomson is a Glasgow-based writer and communication professional. 

Twitter: @ClaireCThomson