Grace, William Turner and the Huge Wave

Flint Castle William Turner 1838

I’ve known my dear friend Grace since childhood. She is a painter and a brilliant colourist. As a child her most treasured possession was a tin of glass beads and buttons. She would spend hours sitting with this tin in her lap picking out individual beads, holding them up to the light and really looking at their colour and shape.  

Last time she came to visit me we drove to Margate in Kent to take a look at the Turner Contemporary gallery. Turner had a strong connection with Margate having been schooled there as a lad and then returning many times to paint its skies of which he once said:  '...the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe.' 

This was a formal invitation only event and Grace arrived at my flat with her hair perfectly coiffured. She was wearing a top that looked a bit like a painting. It was a Desigual design, they’re an interesting Spanish label, and it had Jackson Pollock-esque random drips and spatters of colour on a white background. We found a car park by Margate harbour and were standing in the sun putting coins into the Pay and Display machine when this huge wave surged over the wall and deposited several buckets of cold sea water onto us. I was lucky as it only caught my left side, but Grace was totally soaked and from looking perfectly co-ordinated her appearance was now totally Jackson Pollock. 

We ran into the gallery and into the ladies and Grace got onto her knees trying to dry her hair beneath the hand dryer on the wall. I kept watch by the door as though we were doing something illicit. But the effect of the blow dryer on the sea water turned her hair into this kind of frizzled fuzz. Grace then had to brave all the guests at the opening. 

She took it very well I thought. She is such a devotee of Turner's work and we both agreed that David Chipperfield's building is a worthy monument to him. It has been built right at the water's edge and has a huge window looking out over the sea and sky.

'Turner always painted looking into the sun, while Constable painted with the sun overhead. That's why the light in their paintings has such a different quality' Grace said.

Now the light from the giant window behind Grace gave her newly dried blonde hair the appearance of a halo and made her look like a slightly demented angel. I said nothing because she had forgotten all about her ruined hair in her enthusiasm for Turner.

My debut novel The Lie Of You is published by Head of Zeus. 

I am on Twitter: @janelythell