Читать книгу Instances of the Number 3 - Salley Vickers - Страница 18

The Soho gallery which Frances managed, dealt, among other contemporary artists, in the works of Patrick Painter. Although Frances did not own the gallery she was indispensable to its running: it was understood that without her skills Gambit Galleries would never have hung on to its most prestigious name.

There were rules for dealing with Patrick Painter: you did not call him before noon; you never enquired about his health, or his financial affairs, and no one was permitted to comment on his name. A journalist from a respected broadsheet had lost a promised interview because he had been unable to refrain from audibly murmuring, ‘Painter by name…’ Frances, who arrived too late to prevent this outrage, explained, ‘It is not his own name, you see. It was his stepfather’s—they didn’t get on.’ ‘Why for Christ’s sake didn’t he change it then, if it offends him so much?’ the aggrieved young journalist had asked, conscious of the hole in the copy this upset would make, and doubly conscious of his editor’s displeasure.

Painter lived in Isleworth with his mother and his tortoises. Frances had sometimes speculated that the mother and the tortoises occupied interchangeable places in the artist’s mind. It was to visit Painter that Monday morning that Frances had returned the previous evening from Shropshire.

When Painter asked to see Frances, it was generally to seek her view on some painting on which he was stuck. As with everything to do with him these meetings involved a certain amount of ritual before a hint of anything to do with work-in-hand could be broached.

‘So you’ve deigned to come and see me, have you?’ Painter said, meeting her at the front door and indicating she should go ahead into the front room. ‘About bloody time, too!’ He swept a chair free of a pile of unsorted magazines and papers.

Paradoxically, the house, although apparently a tremendous muddle, always had an ordering effect on Frances, a product, she supposed, of the fact that the house itself made up much of the subject matter of the artist’s orderly paintings. There was some to-do about the biscuits—the tin could not be found. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the ginger nuts. What has the bloody bitch done with them?’

Frances was used to this. ‘If by that you mean Mrs Hicks, I think it most unlikely she has done anything. I expect you’ve eaten them.’ She looked about the Formica-covered kitchen until she found a tin with a picture of the Queen with her corgis on it. ‘These shortbread, will they do?’

‘At a pinch—but you would prefer ginger nuts…?’

Frances said she’d prefer not to have a biscuit at all lest she grew fat.

‘Rubbish, you have no arse to speak of.’

‘Well, I hope to keep things that way.’

‘Nonsense, a woman should have a decent arse.’

Other than the nude models he must have drawn from in his pre-abstract days, Frances doubted Painter had ever had anything to do with a woman’s bottom. Nevertheless, because he seemed to like it, she kept up the myth of his erotic interests.

‘Where are the tortoises? Are they out of hibernation?’

‘Fred is—Ginger is still comatose, lazy cow.’

‘Can one call a tortoise “cow”?’

Frances was not deceived by Painter’s habits of speech: she knew him to be a man of warm, if secret, sensibility. After Peter was killed she had found herself ringing the artist in need of the kindness which lay beneath the superficial savageness. Also, he was from Cork and she liked an Irish accent. Maybe that was why she got on with Bridget…?

Painter had got round to his current fix. ‘It’s this effing catastrophe,’ he complained, indicating a canvas composed of tiny delicately painted squares of lilac—recognisably a mutation of the hall wallpaper. ‘Look at it, will you just—I’ll have to destroy the whole bollocking thing.’

‘Maybe it just needs some balance,’ said Frances carefully. She had decided long ago that it didn’t much matter what one said to Painter about his pictures—all that was required was to sound as if what was said made sense. What was important was that Painter felt safe in showing her uncompleted work. It was like being the stooge to a highly strung comic—he relied on her to feed him the right lines.

‘No, no, no, no,’ said Painter, falling into the familiar patter, ‘it’s vile, vile—I’ll have to ditch it.’

‘Hmm,’ said Frances, ‘I see what you mean—but it would be a pity.’

They stood side by side and stared at the canvas. Frances had noticed before that Patrick was nice to be near: he gave one space; there was no crowding in—or pulling away.

A tortoise, presumably Fred, ambled through the door and rested where a patch of sun lit up the pattern of the carpet.

‘“Gaming in a gap of sunlight”,’ said Painter resting his foot on the tortoise’s back. ‘I’ll scrap it then, shall I?’

This was the crucial moment. Frances gambled, ‘Maybe you’re right…’

‘Or maybe I could do something with it,’ said Painter, quickly. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think you generally know.’

‘That’s all right then,’ said Painter relieved. ‘Glad we sorted that out. Damn that tart—I could do with a ginger nut.’

Frances walked down to the corner shop with Painter where he bought Typhoo tea, ‘Extra strength’, and two packets of biscuits. The woman in the shop said, ‘You still want the Sunday Sport, Mr Pinter?’

‘Pinter?’ asked Frances outside. ‘What’s this?’

A sly smile spread over Painter’s face. ‘Their mistake, not my doing. She thinks I’m Harold Pinter. Writes plays,’ he added helpfully.

‘I know he’s a playwright—a highly civilised one. What’s going on?’

‘It’s an identity swap,’ said Painter, slightly sheepish. ‘When the silly cow took over from the Patels they told her I was famous—and she read the name as Pinter. She’s got a daughter doing Media Arts at Luton. I can’t help it if the woman’s a star-fucker.’

‘Is that why you’re ordering the Sunday Sport?’ asked Frances, light dawning. ‘Honestly, Patrick, how infantile!’