The Exhibitionist, page 11
‘His son. He’s a complete genius. Restaurant person. Cook. He’s said he’ll do it as a huge favour to Dad.’
‘Not for free?’
‘Well, no. But mates’ rates.’
‘Oh, so he’s a friend of your father’s?’
‘Of mine,’ says Leah, and she stands up energetically, starts fiddling with the computer cable.
‘Great. Great! What exactly is he cooking?’
‘It is,’ says Leah, ‘all still a bit up in the air.’
Martyn frowns. ‘But should—’
‘It’s going to be spectacular,’ interrupts Leah. ‘And worth it. I’m sure there were more . . . hang on.’
Martyn’s looking discreetly at receipts. ‘How much,’ he asks, ‘does it cost to have a picture framed?’
‘Hundred, hundred and fifty. Depends on the glass. That’s not professional level even. But there’s that bloke on Junction Road near the pet shop, he loves Dad so it’s virtually free. Dad’s handling all that, didn’t want me to worry. He’s very protective.’
‘Mmm. Wow,’ he says appreciatively. ‘And he, Ray, is showing how many pictures?’
But Leah doesn’t hear. He’s desperate to know how much the art will sell for – £500? £10,000? – but she says it’s private. He’s only seen the odd example, a couple of self-portraits from his more figurative years, a landscape hanging in the living room, and even those were hard to navigate; is that a nose? What do the thick painty drips signify? Leah won’t discuss the sizes, or how people will get the paintings home. Martyn needs a crib sheet; how will he explain the work to inquirers if he doesn’t know what they’re meant to be of?
He’s suspecting that usually professional exhibition-organizers are involved. Like Sir Leonard Woolley at Troy, he keeps making extraordinary discoveries: is this a laminator? He’s poking around for some sort of price list but keeps turning up steep invoices instead: for D-rings, colour printing, polishing cloths, rolls of bubble wrap; specialist light bulbs; two dozen sheets of twenty-eight acid-free archive-quality Sold stickers from Sothern’s Fine Arts Services of Piccadilly, each an ordinary-looking red dot costing seventy-nine pence.
‘Are we really sure about these?’
‘Why not?’
‘Will he . . . they’re quite pricey, and will he realisticall—’
‘We’re not using Lidl freezer labels,’ says Leah. ‘Are you insane?’ Everything enrages her, despite her reputation as the mild one. ‘He’s an international artist!’
‘Of course. Only the best, b—’
‘And if any are left, we’ll just use them next time. It’s not,’ she adds, ‘really any of your business.’
He hesitates. There’s an atmosphere. ‘No, of course not. I hadn’t realized that exhibitions needed so much . . . stuff.’
‘Mm.’
Some of the invoices, the ones Ray calls ‘red and inflamed’, are from last year, the year before. ‘We’re getting there,’ she keeps saying. ‘Dave Austerberry’d better be coming.’
‘Who?’
‘From the Highgate Gazette. They’re obsessed with Dad. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him.’
‘By the way,’ Martyn says, rubber-banding a stack of postcards printed with Ray’s quite famous Portrait of the artist on the edge, ‘I can’t wait to see the . . . art. God it’s so exciting; you know I’ve only ever seen the ones in the house? Are any affordable by . . . me?’
She scrunches up her pretty face, like a martyr suffering for her Lord. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says.
‘Right. Yes. Well, does he paint you lot? Patrick? Hard to imagine him sitting sti—’
Leah closes her eyes. She takes a breath. ‘Me. He paints me.’
There’s a touch of Patrick around her brow and temples, Martyn’s thinking, when Leah says: ‘You know she doesn’t get it.’
‘Who?’
‘She thinks,’ says Leah, ‘that I . . . indulge him.’
‘I . . . oh, Jess?’
‘But that’s . . . how can she imagine,’ she says, ‘what it’s like, being important to someone who needs you so much? He tells me everything. He’s so funny, and so intelligent, much more than I am, so it’s kind of a . . . a . . .’
‘Duty?’
‘Honour: making him feel able to work. And Lucia won’t, and Jess won’t, but someone has to. You wouldn’t believe some of the awful stuff he’s gone through, but he can totally rely on me. Anyway, where else would I live? What would I do? I’m lucky,’ she says.
Martyn falters. If he and Jess moved in, would Leah abandon them? But, before he can prod her, she’s straight back to the Yeses. ‘Ugh, Penny Cable? She can’t even paint. People are outrageous; they just want booze and a bit of his glamour.’
‘I must admit I’m pretty excit—’
‘Poor Dad. If you’re one of the greatest living British artists, everybody wants a piece.’
Martyn’s still wondering if catering was necessary. And live music? The Hanrahans will be ruined.
‘Have you done one, a show, before?’
Leah’s back is turned, but she says, after a moment, ‘Yes.’
‘How do you make sure people buy the work? Apart from reviews, do you advertise?’ but Leah’s suddenly much more interested in the neighbours (but not the bastards at 32. Or 19–25, actually. Or the flats). She passingly mentions having ordered fifteen pairs of glass tea-light holders, from a friend of the caterer’s.
‘Lush ones. Sort of bubbly.’
‘You mean hand-made?’
‘Course. The man sent a drawing.’
‘OK. Are you allowed candles in a place like that?’
‘Stop worrying. Anyway, we’re being scrifty. Thrifty. Guess who’s taking the photos?’
‘Who?’
‘Me! I’ve got Dad’s old Canon; he’s a brilliant photographer.’
‘Oh,’ says Martyn. ‘I mean, that’s great.’
Leah lifts her chin. ‘You don’t think I can do it.’
‘No, I do,’ says Martyn. ‘Absolutely. It’s good to be supporting him,’ he says. ‘It’s such a pity,’ he adds cunningly, ‘that we’re so far away. If we lived closer, there’d be so much I, Jess and I, could do to help.’
‘Yeah right,’ says Leah. ‘But she’d nev—’
‘Actually, don’t tell Jess I said so, but we’re . . . there are plans.’ He lowers his voice. ‘In the pipeline.’
Leah’s eyes fill; in her blink, her anxious hands, there’s something Martyn doesn’t want to see. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘Would you?’
‘You, you’d want us to move back?’
‘Course!’ The tears escape; they roll down her cheeks to her mouth and she licks them up. ‘Right now, if you can. He’s not well. Of course she should be here. I need . . . it’s a great idea. Get your stuff sent over from Scotland, and—’
‘Hang on,’ says Martyn. ‘We’d have to plan. It’ll take time, and it’s . . . Our whole, well, not lives, but our jobs are out there,’ and a silence begins to thicken. What has he said wrong? ‘But I’m sure we will. Why are you crying? There’s loads of room, and if—’
‘You what? What do you mean?’ says Leah. ‘Room where?’
18
Lucia has a plan and she executes it perfectly. She lures Eric Nakamura to the critic and then, one hand on Ray’s shoulder, the other replenishing his special violently spicy rice crackers, she says airily: ‘We’ve acquired a couple of extra guests to celebrate with.’
She never had boldness like that, before. Pretending to adjust the curtains, she’s remembering how, on the way to that Chinese restaurant on an icy night like this, she had tried to squash her pride that Priya Menon apparently wanted her company. She must, Lucia had decided, be included in a bigger dinner: a friendly social gesture to someone you don’t really want to see. Or it would be for brain-picking: you conceitedly believe the person wants your company but actually it’s to assess their son’s A-level art coursework, or give a sketch to a school auction. Her tentatively puffed ego began to deflate. Ray does always say she takes herself too seriously.
The restaurant was a former pub, a corner Szechuan; steamy windows in the frozen air. She’d told Ray she was meeting an art-school friend, Suze; he says Suze is provincial. Suze has started saying that Lucia needs to stand up to him. She once told her: ‘I’d kill for you. And clean up afterwards. Remember that.’
Lucia pushed open the door.
The vowel sounds were like Chinatown but it wasn’t the bright clatter she’d expected. There was a fug of rum and star anise, an orchestral version of ‘Let’s face the music’; the room was darkly slatted, red-and-gold as a bordello. What was she doing here? She couldn’t even quite remember Priya’s voice. Then she looked again.
There she was. She sat at a table for four, candlelit beneath a plastic bas-relief of storks and pagodas and a shimmering peach-and-sapphire sky. She was in profile, typing hurriedly to, presumably, cabinet ministers. She didn’t look up until Lucia loomed over her, and then she grinned.
Nobody else joined them. Priya made her laugh and laugh and over-order: sea-tasting aubergine, morning glory with sesame oil, laminated pork, a ferocious soup of tiny mushrooms which they agreed was like spicy cat-piss. Lucia watched her: that firm chin, those diamond-cut lips and, when Priya caught her looking, heat spread like cream over her breastbone and up her neck. She had become fifteen again, encountering a boy in the wild, aglow.
They drank plum wine, like deadly bubblegum. Under the table, her hand began to take the mouldable shape of Priya’s head, cradling the occipital bone. She kept her eyes from Priya’s blouse. Priya’s blouse, although buttoned right up to its sensible collar, appeared to be silk: a dark rosy matte pink. It was meant to be looked at, as was, presumably, what lay beneath it, under the softness: something softer still. Lucia, usually, would have minded. She can’t bear the sight of women in fabric which clings to them.
But Priya didn’t know her, before. She is allowed.
‘Let’s have some cognac,’ she said, and the waiter appeared at her side.
‘Is that wise? It’s late already, and—’
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Priya. ‘Trust me.’ And, knowing that Ray would be back much later, full of snubs and grievance, Lucia let it happen.
They drank the cognac; she looked at Priya’s jaw, her lids, her hands: strong-looking, clean squarish nails, beautiful and nothing like Lucia’s. There was a ring on her right, a flat black stone; a gold necklace. This was a woman, Lucia thought, who chooses to take care of herself.
Lucia tried to look knowledgeable about select committees, Newsnight, PMQs. Priya prodded her: ‘What’s your next show? What do your gallery say?’ The fan of tendons on the back of her hand quivered; the pearly muscles, the tiny nets.
‘Hello?’ said Priya. ‘Are you in a fugue state?’
‘What?’
‘You odd woman. You seem . . . elsewhere.’
So Lucia asked questions and gradually extracted a little about how Priya grew. While Lucia was spending her pocket money on hair slides from Dagenham market, or drinking cider in Valentines Park, Priya was hiding from her mother’s rages in public libraries, long winter weekends of track-practice, brass ensembles (‘though they wouldn’t sit with me; said my coat smelt of curry’), maths club in youth centres, chess with her quiet father who worked nights in a newsagent’s to put her through private school. Priya’s mother hit her with a vacuum-cleaner pipe when she cut her hair, with a hand when she came second in a gymnastics contest. ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ Priya said. ‘She deserved a better life. All the constant assessment about were we as good as her friends, crappy council flat, desperate car. Keralans are very competitive. She was working in a care home because they didn’t want a Paki midwife.’
‘Oh!’
‘Mmmhm. Whereas, apparently, I was both Paki and coconut. And she’d cry at the thought of her family, who looked down on her for marrying a Gujarati man. But she, she wanted me to be the best.’
‘Were you?’
‘Mostly, yes. And at least I got married when all my cousins did. Major issue. And a Hindu.’
‘Oh. Really? Tell—’
Priya went on: ‘Though, God, she hated me being in politics. Embarrassing at temple.’
‘But surel—’
‘No, no. Civil servant. Consultant. Not . . . furious about everything, and knocking on doors begging for people’s votes.’
Everything she said had a cutting intimacy; it was like being excitingly flayed. ‘Does he even work?’ she asked about Ray.
‘Of course! He’s much more . . . he’s very successful,’ Lucia said, and Priya pursed her lips.
‘But his time’s been and gone, hasn’t it?’
‘No!’
‘It’s true. You know it.’
‘I’ve never, he . . . it’s peculiar talking about it like this. I don’t usually . . .’ and Priya merely smirked. ‘That’s definitely not . . . how things are seen.’
Lucia didn’t dare look at her watch. She’d meant to be home by now but this was much too interesting, and she was possibly too drunk, to stop.
Then Priya said:
‘Do you know Hellie Brook?’
‘The artist?’
‘Is there more than one?’
‘I do a bit. We’ve done shows together, but she— Why? How do you . . . ?’
‘We used to live together at college.’
‘Live?’ said Lucia. Hellie Brook is unsmiling, flat, tall. She’s successful enough for Ray to hate her so Lucia always avoided her, out of loyalty. ‘Oh, was that when she was with Malcolm Gunner?’
‘I certainly hope not,’ said Priya. ‘No, she was with me.’
‘With you?’
‘With me.’
‘With as in . . . with?’
‘Yes,’ said Priya, and held her gaze.
Ray takes the news of their extra guests strangely well.
Lucia emphasizes the husband. ‘Remember you met him at an opening, I think? Last year? You really got on. He’s a doctor, or something, isn’t he? Hands? I – I bumped into him on the way home. This evening. He asked all about you.’
‘Oh yes, Stan, Sid . . . whatever, he did take a shine,’ and everyone begins to relax. ‘Husband of that Minim, Menom woman, the politician, isn’t he? Poor bastard; he did look hag-ridden.’
‘Well, anyway, he asked why I had so much parsley and I told him about tonight and tomorrow, your big show, and he was so excited that, accid—’
‘You didn’t invite him to the show?’ Leah says.
‘I . . .’ She tries to keep looking straight at Ray, to read him but remain unread. Has he guessed? The longer one is married, the harder truth becomes. ‘I, actually, I did mention that he could drop by. Later.’
‘Oh did you?’
‘I . . . yes.’
‘Sorry, who’s coming?’ asks the Catamite. ‘Do we approve?’
‘Which politician?’
‘God, not that woman. The shouty one?’ says Larry. ‘Asian? That’s his wife?’
‘She might,’ says Lucia passingly, ‘come too. Is she a politician? I suppose.’
Now Ray goes to the window. He hoicks the lower frame open with one hairy arm. ‘Where are they, then?’ he says, leaning out into the rain. ‘More liggers. Christ, everyone wants a piece.’
‘Oh, they – he didn’t say. Maybe they won’t make it after all,’ she tells him.
He glances at her over his shoulder, looks back outside: a wolf, waiting. ‘She’s only MP for Sheffield or Birmingham, somewhere like that, isn’t she? Not even in the actual government. She’d better be Labour, though, or she’s not setting foot inside my house.’
Usually, Lucia would mouth ‘our house’ if his back was turned. Now Priya really is coming, will be exposed to Ray, like a big crazy lion nosing its prey. She’ll see the cluttered photos up the stairs: furious Jess throwing ice cream, glops of sunlit strawberry glinting like a fountain; Pat and Leah in a paddling pool filled with dead leaves, both platinum-haired, scowling like little padded Furies, a sadness in Patrick’s face because the previous moment, uncaptured on Kodak, Leah had whacked him with her bucket. There’s one of Lucia herself in her only ever bikini, grinning shyly on a Dorset beach. It makes her sad for so many reasons but, whenever she takes the picture down, Ray reattaches it. It’s nailed there now with so many brass hooks and entangled wires that she’s given up.
‘I mean, she might not come,’ she says. ‘Or he.’
‘I could tell her a thing or two about local government,’ says Gerry, a jazz-album reviewer.
‘If they think they’re too posh for us,’ Ray declares, ‘they can shove it. It’s late and I’m starving. We’re not waiting for them, I’ll tell you that much.’
‘Nope,’ says Leah.
‘Anyway,’ Ray says indignantly, ‘what do we pay them for? They can’t be voting constantly, can they? There aren’t enough . . . laws.’ Lucia presses her lips together. ‘And that poor bloke. Stan. Sid? Imagine being married to such an an— Well,’ he adds, pausing significantly, ‘let’s not get into that.’
Sid: she tries not to think about him, without success. If Ray found out, would the husbands fight? A battle on the patio, like elephant seals clashing their blubbery chests? Not that Ray can ever find out.
What does Sid know about Priya’s London life? ‘I mean, I could always cancel,’ she says, and holds her breath.
I’d burst into flames. Short of killing my children, there is nothing I would not do to see her. Lucia used to set herself tests: how far she’d go to spare her babies pain. Swimming rivers, walking stony perilous paths, losing an arm, and/or leg? Left? Definitely. Right? Yes: anything. Make me prove my love.
But it was a lie, even then. She should have stood up for Patrick and didn’t. There were so many times they could have stopped for hot chocolate after school, but she had hurried back so Ray wouldn’t feel rejected. She could have lain beside her sweet boy on his little bed and properly assessed the risks posed by:
Poltergeists
Bears
Mummies
Vampires and pigeons
Doomsday
Wolves and other wild dogs
