Yesterdays of their lives - Runty

Runty wandered into the back room of Bargain Abasement and flung himself into an armchair. Why wasn't he better educated, he thought. If he was more…erudite - was that the word?- perhaps Claudio would take more notice of him. He knew perfectly well why he wasn't better educated, though. Being expelled from Wellminstow Secondary Modern at the age of fourteen had knocked him squarely off the straight and narrow, and although his parents had eventually found another school for him, the damage had been done.

He'd never been academic, though, being more into expressing his inner self through art, which was never likely to make him a star of a Secondary Modern. Runty sighed deeply and cast his mind back to the day he was expelled from school. It had all started with a third-year art outing to the Tate Gallery, with families welcome. He'd wandered around, glad to be away from his family - his dad thought it was the 'tater gallery and was disappointed not to find pictures of King Edwards and Egyptian New potatoes - and especially his little sister, who would always talk endlessly about the book she was reading. Her current obsession was a book called 'The Family from One-End Street' about a poor dustman's family and their adventures. One of the Ruggles (for that was their name) children was called Lily Rose, after a painting that their mother, who for all her lowly background was not totally without culture, had seen in an art book and loved, called 'Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.' A certain degree of humour, at least in the eyes of Runty's sister, was to be derived from the fact that in spite of her refined and romantic name she was a large, clumsy lump of a girl, and his sister rarely ceased to regale him with her exploits.

And suddenly, there in the gallery, it was. The very same painting. 'Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.' He could scarcely believe it. It really existed, and it was painted by…he looked at the plaque next to it…John Singer Sargent. Runty had to admit that it wasn't without its sensual element (although to be fair, to a 14-year-old boy there's very little that doesn't have a sensual element); in fact the more he looked at it, the more he admired it and the more it spoke to him.

On Monday, that fateful day, his art class was given the task of showing their appreciation of the works of art they had had the privilege to see by adapting a favourite picture and giving a personal slant. Runty did not hesitate. He spent the lesson blithely creating a touching composition of light, life and moist human closeness that he entitled 'Carnation, Willy, Willy, Nose', and was the first to hand his work in at the end of the hour, whereupon the art master, aghast dragged poor Runty straight to the headmaster's office from whence he left Wellminstow Secondary Modern, never to return again, apart from the time when he was 22 and he was caught offering bubble gum cards to small boys through the railings.