What Was She Thinking? by Zoë Heller

that afternoon, he looked up at a British Museum poster of an ancient Roman urn and remarked on how odd it was to think of an actual person—“a real bloke, thousands of years ago”—creating the artefact. Sheba glanced at him warily. Until now, none of the children had shown the slightest interest in her posters. Connolly’s comment was so much the sort of sentiment that she had wanted to inspire that she half-suspected him of mocking her. “It does your brain in, doesn’t it?” he added now, flicking at his fringe. His face
yielded no trace of satirical intent. “Yes,” she replied, eagerly. “Yes. Exactly . You’re right. It does do your brain in.”
    He prepared to leave. Sheba told him to drop by with his sketches whenever he wanted. “Perhaps the next time you come,” she added, “we’ll have a go at making something with clay.” Connolly nodded but made no other response, and Sheba feared that she had overstepped the mark. When Connolly didn’t show up on the following Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, she took it as confirmation that she had.
    The next Friday, though, just as Sheba was loading the kiln, Connolly reappeared. He had been unable to come earlier in the week, he explained, because he had been tied up with detentions. Sheba, determined not to be overbearing this time, shrugged and said she was glad to see him. He had brought more of his sketches, and they sat for a long time examining his work before chatting more generally about school and other matters. He stayed with her for almost two hours. Towards the end of his visit, Sheba was discussing the science of kiln temperatures when he interrupted her to comment on how nicely she spoke. She didn’t need to be a teacher, he told her earnestly. She could get a job “doing the weather on the telly, or something.” Sheba smiled, amused by his gaucheness. She would keep the career tip in mind, she told him.
    When he returned the next week, he did not bring his sketch pad. He hadn’t got round to any drawing that week, he said. He had just dropped in for a chat. Sheba, who was pleased that he no longer needed the pretext of seeking her artistic advice in order to visit her, welcomed him warmly. There was a book of Degas reproductions lying on her desk—she had brought it in hoping to charm her second-year girls with ballerinas—and, when Connolly picked it up, she encouraged him to look inside.
    He began leafing through the book, stopping every now and then to let Sheba paraphrase the commentary on a particular painting or sculpture. She was very pleased with his response to a painting entitled Sulking. Reading from the book, she informed him that the relationship between the man and the woman in the picture was mysterious and that nobody knew for sure which one of them was meant to be the sulker.
    After looking at the picture again, Connolly declared that there was no mystery—the man was clearly the sulking party. The woman was bending towards him, trying to get something from him, and his hunched, irascible posture indicated his displeasure. Sheba was impressed by this analysis, and she congratulated Connolly on being an acute observer of body language. After he had gone, she found herself chuckling aloud. Connolly’s special needs teacher would have been very shocked, she thought, if he could have seen his learning-disabled pupil chattering so enthusiastically about Degas!
    As time went on and Connolly’s visits became routine, he was emboldened to volunteer more of his insights about art and his ideas about the world. Sometimes, when he and Sheba were talking or looking at pictures, he would get up suddenly and go to the studio window to comment on the shapes of the clouds, or the purplish colour of the early evening sky. Once, in what was surely a rather desperate moment, he even stroked the nubby mustard material of the studio curtains and pronounced it “an interesting fabric.”
    It is pretty clear to me that there was a