The Exhibitionist, page 17
‘You’d have done what, precisely?’ asks Gillian.
He’s avoiding her; unpleasant woman. Now he and Jess are strolling to the Gallery, past the reservoir, an uninviting pub, a long curved street of peeling council mansion flats with improbable names, Cantalowe and Ribblescar. Bus drivers leaving their shift trudge from the depot towards the lights of Archway. Jess is quiet while he talks through it; the ignominy of having been kept in the dark is beginning to ebb. Anyway, he thinks, it’s not as if the bloody Hanrahans know everything about my family.
That is a path down which he is definitely not going to head.
‘I can’t,’ says Patrick, which Leah ignores. She hands him the money; hurries back into the living room.
‘How are you doing, Pa?’ he hears her say. ‘Another few minutes and we’ll head off. You look so handsome in that shirt.’
She told Patrick there was no time to walk. The number 4 bus used to feel like part of the house. Now he shifts on the itchy seat, checks again over his shoulder, at the CCTV as it flicks between the upper deck, the back, Patrick hunched in his corner, looking like the criminal. The money is loud in his pocket. His bandaged hand, ribbed with brown, throbs on his lap.
Even he, as Leah put it, knows the money won’t go far in Waitrose, but Ray will be demeaned by anywhere cheaper.
‘Are you sure I need to?’ he kept saying. Although Leah said she’d hang the pictures herself, she’s still angry. ‘Maybe the catering man’s a bit delayed?’
Leah palely compressed her lips. ‘Forget it. He’s . . . no. Definitely not. We need snacks. And seriously, you have to get a sodding cab back. Don’t be weird about it. This is a bloody emergency.’
It’s years since he was in a huge supermarket; the orange and purple plastic, the crashing baskets. Nothing is where he’d expect; he wanders past melons and gins and mops, unable to ask. Would Ray accept oatcakes? Chocolates? Head down, he returns for a trolley, gathers jumbo bags of ready salted, grapes, cheap pitted olives, chocolate orange-peel to please him, crispbread, the largest-size blocks of Cheddar, six marked-down Family Farmhouse loaves. Hula Hoops? This is not a children’s party. Ray will notice that it’s all vegetarian; he reaches for cocktail sausages, but cannot do it. He hurries through Meat, averting his eyes.
In the alcove by Baby and Pet he re-counts the notes. Whatever Leah says, there must be a way to transport this trolleyful on the bus. Never mind sharing a car with a stranger; just ringing the cab office will finish him.
A tiny old woman, squinting, hair a platinum wave, scrapes the corner of her trolley against his bad knuckles as they pass, scowls unapologetically as if he is to blame. The pain is a tunnel; he grips the child-cage so as not to fall. Luckily, he hasn’t eaten, but he’s almost too dizzy to queue for the till. Outside, three bags per hand, he tries to catch a bus. The minutes pass. His breathing is shaky; sweat dampens his back. Ray will be furious. Ray, who says he can’t take the pub job.
Patrick starts to walk.
Lucia, ready to pass out, is waiting for her lover.
It’s gone six o’clock. She is wearing, after several desperate costume changes, the close-fitting hot black wool dress she has worn for almost every opening and party for the last fifteen years, with the pink lightning-bolt earrings Leah gave her for her birthday, and yellow shoes. Priya will say she looks like a Gothic Battenberg but once, when she saw a photo of Lucia being runner-up at the Kent Prize, in this very dress, she said she fancied her.
The entrance is tiled with sub-Minton encaustic; a lavish pattern of buff and rust with some lovely turquoise corners, like a staircase at the V&A, but the rosy colour is wearing away, and they’re dulled with salt crystals, linseed, paint. Lucia thinks: aren’t we all. There’s some spirit soap in the studio; she wouldn’t mind getting down on her knees with a dish-sponge and losing herself there: an act of service. She is turned on to the point of fear, or perhaps it’s the other way round. One of the little blue squares is loose; then it’s in her hand.
The plan is, or was: the Hanrahan entourage arrives at five, ‘less interesting’ guests start to show an hour later, with Ray rolling up at five to six on the dot because, as he put it, ‘I’m not hanging around like an old whore.’
Until he’s here they’re forbidden to go up to the mezzanine, let alone enter the Gallery, so everyone’s milling about in the main area. There’s no sign of food but a stunning quantity of booze; Ray’s new friend Salvo has impressive luck at auctions after mysterious fires. He’s done Ray proud, his motivation, as ever, uncertain. Smokers huddle in the famous garden; Lucia’s already had to rush home for the spare corkscrew. Patrick’s still not arrived; Ray is ignoring him because of the pub job. He’s not speaking to Jess either, or to Lucia. Will, she thinks uneasily, this famous show of his be up to scratch? Marie-Claude is imminent. And stupid Lucia hasn’t seized her chance to hug and snuggle and interrogate her girl, her Jess, because she’s an addict with one consuming interest: the arrival of Priya.
Shouldn’t Ray be here by now? Her stomach’s rumbling, but it’s better out here in the cold hallway than in there, visible. Leah has been watching her, as if she heard Marie-Claude perfectly well. At the back of Lucia’s mind, unease flicks its muscular tail.
Priya said she’d be early: a flying visit. When Lucia’s children were younger, the least delay of Tube or bus after a meeting would generate this same twisting franticness to be with them. Now Lucia thinks: let us escape somewhere, only to whisper, to touch her bare shoulder. I would do anything.
There’s a shuffling sound on the path up to the door; it is ajar but the knocker clanks. Her heart flips like a fish. The door swings open and behold: it’s Sukie fucking Blackstock.
‘I need a drink,’ says Jess, grabbing a bottle of red by the neck.
On the way here she remembered what she’d left in her coat pocket; too late to hide it with Martyn at her side. She’s bundled the coat up, pocket innermost, stuffed it deep under a bench with her bag and other bag. Everyone waits for Ray to arrive; their heads twitch round at the slightest noise, like nervy woodland creatures.
‘Isn’t this fun?’ says Martyn.
Because it’s Ray’s show, there’s already a feeling of end-of-term misrule: his beardy long-ago flatmate leaning over a young arty woman, loud laughing, a glass smashed. People she’s never seen before, or has forgotten, or would like to, stream in; just not her father. Martyn, talking to a woman with lady-novelist hair and what Ray calls menopause jewellery, is waving Jess over as if she’s been lost at a funfair. She glugs most of her glassful, wipes wine from her chin. Of course she shouldn’t be drinking. Oh God, don’t cry.
Martyn’s assessing her. Lately he’s been giving feedback on her appearance: too much black, try a more feminine shape. He’s said twice that Leah looks fantastic; Leah, in a long narrow darkly floral dress, like an artistic vampire, grinned at Jess both times.
‘When’s the food?’ he asks Leah, looking around for somewhere to leave his anorak. He thinks that wearing it every visit endears him to their father, as if rebellion, taken slowly, will eventually win him over. He straightens his now-crumpled jacket. ‘Everyone’s going to drink too much. Did you ask for mini-burgers?’ He murmurs something else to her, too quietly for Jess to hear.
‘You two,’ she says, trying to sound jokey. ‘You’re like secret advisers.’
‘Calm down,’ says Martyn. ‘We’re just making plans. It’s a good thing. Our future.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit strange to do it without me?’ Jess starts to say, with a little laugh, when she realizes he’s stuffing his anorak into the deep gap where she pushed her own coat.
‘Mart—’
‘What?’ he snaps, and it occurs to her that he too is anxious.
‘Can we maybe focus this once on our father,’ says Leah, each word a spondee of dislike. ‘We’ll tell you later.’
It might be the wine, or the Whisky Mac she downed at the Black Ball before she could face the pub toilet, which have jolted her from the path of righteousness, but Jess thinks: absolutely no way. ‘Are you joking? What is it?’
And Leah whispers again in Martyn’s ear. They bend into each other like a couple with a secret.
With a whump like a gas fire catching, Lucia is alert. She shimmers with vestigial rage; never mind her own crimes, let’s fight this little bitch, this thief, this entrapper of idiot men.
Sukie Blackstock, inevitably, is wearing very high heels, a pencil skirt. Such a cliché; Ray should be ashamed. Under her dramatic waisted coat and stupid fur hat, Sukie’s black blouse is translucent, balloon-sleeved, like a dubious St Petersburg governess about to marry money.
‘Oh isn’t this lovely,’ she says with that fake smile: hundreds of teeth, a saccharine shark. She’s brought My Partner Gareth, whose suede scalp and knuckly face suggest both romantic pain and too much exercise. He bobs behind her like a squire, discreetly on call.
‘Are we late?’ she asks innocently, as My Partner Gareth produces a bottle of apple juice from his coat pocket.
Lucia is too furious to smile, too well-trained not to. ‘Early, actually,’ she says, which is such a cop-out. ‘Practically the first.’
‘Well, it’s good to see you,’ says Sukie Blackstock, almost clamping her ferrety claw onto Lucia’s wrist.
Lucia pulls back, points unnecessarily to the last-minute coat rack rigged up by Patrick out of two filing cabinets and a curtain pole. It’s as if Ray has muzzled her, pulled out and mounted her tongue. If she were Priya, she’d roar with blood-lust, send these polluters running. But she is mute, merely gives a horrible little smile and pretends to be checking her phone for the only message which could obliterate Sukie Blackstock entirely.
A miracle. Priya has texted. She should defer the pleasure or pain of reading it until these bastards are out of the way, but how can she resist her?
At the sound of her gasp, Sukie Blackstock narrows her eyes.
Ray wheels himself in like a broken hero, and there is a cheer. He’s definitely ignoring Jess; later he’ll breezily reintroduce her to an old family friend, as if moving to Scotland gave her amnesia. Everyone mills about, as if this bit is the point. Jess dodges her sister, like hostile bacteria on a biology slide. She needs a crisp, anything. Vague smile so no one can corner her as she searches for nourishment; her least favourite Gillian, Jake, is being hostly, sucking up like a page-boy. Edging past him, she sees it again: that passing of an understanding between Martyn and Leah.
‘What,’ she gestures, ‘is going on?’
This seems to decide him. He sidles closer to her father, puts his hand on Ray’s wheelchair handle. He gestures Jess to his side and then he’s saying, in a voice both louder and more intimate than usual, ‘actually we do have some news.’
Jess tries to smile. ‘Do we?’
‘We do!’ and the Gillians murmur encouragingly and Leah narrows her eyes, as if Jess has forgotten to close the door to her soul. Even her father is smirking, or smiling, but he’s looking hard at her.
‘We,’ begins Martyn, ‘and I’m sorry if this isn’t the right moment but, anyway, while we’re waiting for the real fun to start . . .’
‘Bloody warm-up acts,’ says Ray.
‘I thought I’d share some cheering news.’
Jess can feel her face set, so false her teeth hurt. She looks around for her mother.
‘We, Jess and I, will be coming back soon, for good.’
‘Wh—’
‘Because . . . we’re trying for a baby!’
28
Lucia has managed to stay in the entrance after Ray’s arrival.
‘Aren’t you coming up?’ asks practically everyone as the minutes grind by and she pretends to be happy to see them: John Phillips RA with his halitosis, Caroline something and her late-onset husband. Nobody says ‘but you seem to be vibrating’. She can’t keep track of reality, let alone the invented facts: where she’s been on certain evenings, whom she was meant to have met when. For an icy second, she can’t even remember what the secret is.
The girls stick their heads into the hallway, respectively plaintive and hostile. They’re fine, she tells herself. Jess has Martyn and Leah has, well . . .
And then, at last, unbelievably, Priya arrives in a rush of cold air, perfume, pheromones. She floats down the corridor towards Lucia, stops seven or eight feet away. Space is not emptiness; Ray scoffs at this, says Lucia’s trying to be profound, but the gap between them is solid enough to climb.
Some of Ray’s cronies follow; they push past to overtake her before anyone thinks to look round. From behind the men’s backs Priya holds her gaze with such an ardent private look, mouth compressed to keep the smile in, that Lucia’s body seems to thump. She cannot turn her eyes away. Every rustle, the swish of Priya’s elbow against her coat, the kiss of her feet on the tiles, is amplified, like Lucia’s own breath.
‘Let me . . . I’ll hang up your coat,’ Lucia says, and Priya leans nearer, close enough to inhale.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ says Duncan Edge loudly. ‘How do you know Ray?’
He’s looming over her. Priya lowers her eyes from Lucia’s, smiles up at him. Smooth as you like, she says, ‘Local celebrity’ and he nods knowledgeably, delighted to have her full attention.
The guests part before her like Israelites; Lucia watches, aches. Priya is beautiful in a sleeveless silk top tucked into trousers, lilac, black; glossy hair like half a yard of sex pouring down her back. Lucia would kill, go to prison, to have a moment alone with her now, pressed against a beam, either of them doing the pressing. But instead she plays hostess, funnelling guests towards Ray and dodging questions. ‘Still doing your . . . art?’ say two of his acolytes, then a third. ‘Haven’t heard from you for a while. Easing off a bit? Nice for Ray to have his time in the spotlight. Still sculptoring?’
‘Trying!’ she answers. Even though Priya’s so impressed about Venice, it’s a relief to know Marie-Claude’s on her way, that soon she’ll understand she must tell the Biennale people to forget it. It isn’t worth the Ray-stress. Anything but that.
Their coats are entwined. She needs to rescue hers, but Martyn is shepherding her towards the stairs. He seems dissatisfied, his hand unpleasantly hot on her hip. She can smell his sweat.
‘Seen Patrick?’ he asks her, then Leah, who turns away impatiently.
Everyone’s drinking far too much, except for water. There’s no way to ask politely what’s happened to the catering, why Leah’s constantly checking her phone, muttering about a taxi. Will Ray give a signal when they’re all allowed to see the show? He’s unconcernedly chatting, like a visiting potentate, not the subject; has Dr Mac tried something new? Even the guests are anxious. Are there going to be speeches, the ting-tinging of a glass? Jess thinks: I need a pee. She starts biting her fingers and Martyn bats her hand from her mouth as if she’s a pet. How could he have said that, here, unilaterally? It takes all her training not to whack his arm away.
An unbelievably long time passes before Leah, hand on her father’s shoulder, clears her throat. Everyone’s ready; they hush instantly.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Up you go.’
There is nervous laughter, unsuccessful cheering. What is to be done about Ray? A secret lift is rumoured, or four large men hoisting his wheelchair but, after explaining that he doesn’t want a palaver, Ray taps his way very slowly up the stairs, his pale walking stick matching his linen jacket.
‘Are we ready?’ asks Martyn, hot on her heels. Jess’s mother, nibbling her lip in the way her father hates, is still faffing about in the entrance hall, as ever forgetting people’s names. Did she even hear Martyn? Jess keeps looking behind for her as she trails upstairs next to him, wanting to push.
‘Ready as we’ll ever be,’ says Leah up at the top, as if it has nothing to do with her. She looks, thinks Jess, totally knackered. She lifts the clip on the embarrassing red rope across the entrance to the Gallery, takes her place by a pile of little booklets at the doorway: biographies of ‘the artist Ray Hanrahan’, like something at the Tate.
They’re filing into the Gallery now. Even from the backs of their heads, Jess can tell they’re automatically adopting the Art Face: knowledgeable reverence.
Then they fall silent.
‘That’s promising, surely?’ says Martyn. ‘They must love it.’
Leah, unsmiling, hands a booklet to the Sorensens. She misses nothing so of course she knows that Jess and Martyn are next in the line, yet she pretends not to register them.
‘Do you need one of these?’ she says, deadpan, and Martyn says: ‘Ha ha ha!’
Jess thinks: I cannot keep faking it beside him. He’s made such a public show of her, of them. She’s too hot, almost faint; people are looking at her stomach. Downstairs, bundled under the coat bench, the cold white stick keeps its secret.
And at last she catches a glimpse through the clog of guests at the doorway and into the Gallery: pools of illumination against the walls, oddly clustered tea-light holders on pedestals, extra booklets everywhere and the room dividers, to which her brother has nailed fabric in an unwise peacock-blue, hung with . . .
Where are the pictures?
Part Four
29
Priya is still downstairs. Everyone wants to give her advice, complain about their neighbours’ trellising, amuse her. She’s a queen bee being shown around a new hive.
So Lucia needs to stay here just outside the Gallery entrance, greeting people; it’s for the common good. Ray will already be angry with her; she might as well loiter where she can look down from the mezzanine, for when Priya reappears.
Has she even made it to the foot of the stairs? It’s impossible to see without folding oneself completely over the balcony, and death by falling at Ray’s exhibition would be an unforgivable way to go. Lucia tries to keep the thread between them taut by sheer force of will, but Priya spills so much friendliness, bordering on flirtation, on the ground. Handsome men, sensible women, drifty English girls; if she could, Lucia would ban them all.
