The Exhibitionist, page 7
‘But who,’ he’d say, ‘wants normal?’
Jess says he’s enslaved her, that Leah’s a Victorian spinster-daughter. She’ll arrive soon, smelling of the train, ready to judge, but she doesn’t understand a thing. Besides, soon it’ll be different. This weekend might be the time to tell them.
‘Of course I want you to be happy,’ Ray often reminds her, ‘as long as you’re still my girl.’
‘Always,’ she says. ‘I’ll always be.’
Here, in the dark beside him, she’s wondering if it’s a promise she can keep.
She can hear him flexing his toes. ‘Who else’ll be here?’
‘For the exhibition?’
‘No, for my nude breakdancing try-out,’ he says, but lovingly. ‘Fool. I’m an excellent dancer, you know.’
‘I do.’
‘Could have done so many things. Maybe I’ll make a record. Do some telly. Write a novel.’
‘You could. When all this is done, definitely. So . . . so who’s staying? Right, so there’s the Gillians. Sorry.’
‘Course they are. Too tight for a hotel. Are they snuggling up with me and Mum or . . .’
‘No, weirdly Vivienne’s taking them.’
‘Oh yes? What’s her game, I wonder.’
‘She’s so uptight about her house,’ says Leah, ‘that it must be to please you. Because she’s still holding a flame.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Ray says. ‘She is definitely coming, isn’t she?’
‘I told you.’
‘Well, she’d better not get her predatory hooves into my little brother. Or he into her, not that we’d blame him. Have you found a screen to conceal Gillian behind?’
‘Dad,’ she says, laughing, ‘she’s not that bad.’
‘Hideous.’
‘Shh. Sorry. Um, OK, so yes, David, Gillian and the mini Gillians; Uncle Graeme—’
‘Who isn’t, presumably, plus one.’
‘Never. And . . . Jess. Yes. She’s definitely coming.’
She’d better, thinks Leah, massaging his shoulders; and not upset him either. Last time she was here, Martyn let the front door slam, their father said ‘It’s a miracle I’ve kept my legendary bonhomie’ and everyone, except Jess, laughed. Bitch. She plays the victim, but she hurts him; it’s like she’s honouring them by popping back. It can’t go on. It isn’t fair. This weekend, thanks to Leah’s hard work, Ray will be happy, and Jess will see what she’s been missing, at last.
Leah’s barely sleeping. Her mind won’t stop spooling. As long as nobody drags their chairs on the floor, or makes a sudden noise, or forgets one of his dislikes (cathedral towns; shrubs; supermarkets; wallpaper; exercise; English people with good French accents; umbrellas; ‘health food’; tomato-based pasta sauces; cut flowers; Beethoven; abstinence from anything; post-war fiction; peonies; digital clocks; thin pillows, but also overfilled pillows; all the neighbours; hoop earrings; bread-ends; pitted olives; infants being carried in slings; Italy (weak); shop-bought jam; raw vegetables; food without enough salt or butter; the Council; headphones, or audible music not of his choosing; leftovers; libraries; people who do A levels; people who go to university; Wales and Scotland; loud sneezing; schoolchildren; birds ‘unless for eating’; teachers; the county of Essex; Germans and German art-collectors; attempts to avoid cancer; champagne; milk not in glass bottles; sorbet; illness; television newsreaders; certain women’s haircuts (short/showy-off); cats other than Paisley; banks; everything pertaining to the London Irish; the dark; bad fathers; unfaithful wives), there isn’t a single reason why the exhibition won’t be a triumph.
Just as Leah is taking a second pill, for courage, Vivienne catches her.
Vivienne is, as Leah’s father often says, a bad woman. I’d be overjoyed, Ray says, never to see that witch again, but she lives as close to her ex-husband as a person can. He fears her, she calls him ‘Poor Raymond’ and exists elegantly beside them, like an unexploded bomb too unstable to move. When Lucia was pregnant with Leah, they generously converted the side section for Vivienne, with a door on the first floor between the two households, rarely used.
He says hers is England’s most selfish flat because it’s just three clean bare big rooms on top of each other, no storage into which his old books can creep. Leah’s mother says Vivienne is cordial to her, and she’s civil in return, or maybe it’s the other way round. Lucia can afford to be polite; she was once a looker, has borne his children. Vivienne, however, has beauty; it’s still clinging on in the deep eyes, the bony splendour of her cheekbones. And, of course, she’s never got over Ray. It’s hard to know who wins.
Ray kept asking if she’d RSVP’d to the exhibition, until Leah lied and said yes. And she’s lending, or at least permitting, the use of her elegant home.
‘I do need the airbed pump,’ says Vivienne. She has a large luxurious bedroom, with its television at one end, bath at the other, its questionably enormous bed.
‘Sorry,’ Leah says. Vivienne is impossible not to suck up to. ‘Dad says thanks for having, putting up, the curator, gallerist, Eric thingy. And the Gillian kids.’
‘I never quite know how that marriage works, do you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘David and Gillian. They seem so . . . happy. He doesn’t mind a bit that she’s done so well. And you,’ Vivienne continues, ‘look . . . energized. Are you?’
But Leah has not come this far, to the point of true love, by giving herself away. ‘I’m fine,’ she says.
Vivienne looks a little too long, fleetingly smiles. ‘Oh, and my friend Lars, who’s visiting, is very curious about Ray’s work. So I’ll be bringing him, tomorrow.’
‘Does Dad know?’
‘Lars,’ says Vivienne patiently, ‘is on his way from Malmö. He is,’ she clarifies, ‘a very tall man. And my lover. But don’t tell Ray. We’ll just sneak him into the show.’
‘But—’ says Leah.
‘You do look . . . excited. I’ve noticed you going out more. Your mother, too. Today, or tomorrow,’ says Vivienne, ‘she and I must have a talk.’
Leah is a sea-captain, steering her fragile craft. When Larry Nathaniel himself suggested to Ray that his son Pablo does the catering, Leah thought she might die of hope fulfilled. The universe was aligning. Everything happens for a reason. It took so much coaxing for Ray to agree, even though he’d plainly wanted it, had been flirting with Larry Nathaniel until he agreed they could use the upstairs of the Guildworkers’ Hall for free. And the Gallery, as they’re calling it now, isn’t much: a huge splintery platform, fibreboard walls, but it’s almost as big as the main space, where they have parties and weddings and even, to her father’s cheerful disgust, civil partnerships.
‘As long,’ Ray says, ‘as he keeps the poofs off me.’
Capacity two hundred, according to the website. Is it possible that she was too optimistic? She’s lost track; if there aren’t enough people, he’ll be gutted. And there’s no way it’ll be perfect by tomorrow night. Larry Nathaniel says he’s ‘hands off’, which means he won’t fix the heating, or handle any of the bits proper galleries do: taking the pieces to and from the framers, organizing price lists and biogs, hanging and lighting, consolidating the invites. Laz-Nat, as Ray calls him, is hungover most of the time, doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s been weeks of work, yet Leah has an uneasy feeling that she has forgotten far more than she realizes.
Because Ray mustn’t be reminded that he isn’t with a mainstream gallery at the moment, she keeps all this quiet.
‘So this cook bloke works where?’ her father had said on the way home. ‘Laz-Nat’s son? Do we want him?’
She can’t quite bring herself to say its name until he asks: ‘It’s called . . . “Verdisec’Oh!” ’
‘Jesus.’
‘Don’t blame him, his mate christened it. I think. You know, that tiny little restaurant near the railway bridge by Camden Overground, everyone goes there, it’s had amazing reviews.’
‘Oh,’ said Ray, sounding put out. ‘I thought it had closed down.’
‘Nearly. But they’re hanging on, just Pablo and a couple of mates, making amazing organic—’
‘Hmm. I think I’ve seen a review of his popper-upper in the Camden New Journal. By that madwoman, who asked me out, remember? Anyway. OK, if he’s cheap and good. And no organic rubbish. Bet he fancies you.’
Leah was unable to speak. Please, she begged her personal guardian angel, let him not guess, not see my hope, until there is something to show.
And no one is helping, not really. Her mother should have taken the day off but she puts her work first, always has: bundling them to school early, first in the playground, so she could get started; barely remembering how much they rely on her. Leah and her dad are still trying to persuade her to give up her old studio and be at home more. He needs her. It isn’t fair, isn’t wifely, of her to resist.
Despite his bravery, he is much more easily hurt than anyone realizes.
And what if the space doesn’t do his work justice? His favourite builder, Clive Boleyn, has been jailed for smuggling cigarettes, so they’re using the brother of the vet Ray is trying to befriend so Paisley can have free ear-detanglings. The brother usually constructs yurts; he says he’s worked for other artists but talks about ‘energy’. She’s had to warn him not to mention it in front of her father. He keeps ringing Leah to ask where the pictures are.
‘I told you. We’re hanging them ourselves. Probably on the day.’
‘Why so last min?’ he asked. ‘That’s nuts.’
13
Lucia approaches from the other direction: a piñata of hope, or a battering-ram.
She has made a huge mistake.
What was she thinking? The moment she opens the front door to Priya, everyone will be able to tell. Of all the nights to choose for spontaneity. She should be terrified of what she’s done, what she still intends to do.
Yet she can’t stop grinning. Slowly past the clematis with its leathery leaves like offal, the front of 74, trying too hard with its lavenders and verbena and standard olive. She’s jumpy, like horses scenting smoke. In a few seconds she’ll be home. Like a revolutionary with a bomb under her coat, she is bringing disaster in.
The air is vodka, light and cold. On the doormat remnant, she gives her hair a cursory smoothing, pulls off her mismatched gloves. Is it unfair to hope that they might have cleared up? Ray’s heavy-pocketed donkey-jacket is under the hat-stand; sartorially the eighties were good to him. There’s a smell of burnt toast. Usually, the moment she lets herself into the front hall, she’s holding her breath, braced for the blackness. Even if Ray’s many daily phone calls have been relatively calm, during her journey home anything could have upset him. She could have.
Lately she’s been letting his crises rush past her, like the tide parting around a rock. He always insists on her ringing him, leaving notes explaining her whereabouts and ETA, thorough debriefings about every meeting. It used to feel like loving closeness.
The hallway is painted a dense blue-green. Sometimes it’s like pushing up through an enormous weight of seawater, or running up a down escalator to face Ray’s latest catastrophe. Tonight, at least, he’ll be excited, so she needs to be alert yet apparently relaxed: coffee then one glass of wine. She pinches the pale papyrus skin of her inner elbow. You can do this. You can fake it for a few hours, tonight of all nights.
Her second encounter with Priya Menon, MP, was an accident. A fortnight had passed and Lucia had barely thought of her since the party, not felt a thrill, not sensed the germination of chaos. But, perhaps, she was ready.
She had been fiddling about all week with Dead Helot, Spines and Green Night; nothing was working. She needed the windy rural walks other artists mention in interviews; a coastal garret; a murmuration. But this is her life, so, instead, she nipped down to the National Gallery: late closing.
The cool stony scent of the Sainsbury Wing has always soothed her. She sat in front of the Wilton Diptych; her favourite, for its monochrome wing-tips; the texture of the gold leaf, like the air in a miracle; the fierce deep lapis robes and the face of the kneeling king, a reverential undertaker. Carmel used to bring them here and let her sit. It made her an artist and so, at the beginning of their coupledom, she shyly led Ray to pay homage, or tell her if she was wrong. And Ray . . .
Ray claimed it. He’d always loved it too, he said; knew more about the oak and gilding, was inspired by the profiles. Later he claimed she’d nicked the saint’s crown for one of her Queen Beelzebubs, would tell her that angels were off limits, because he was already painting them. It became his, only his.
So the Wilton slowly lost its power and, this time, it failed her completely. It was almost December: a black rainy evening, kebab-shop lighting in the puddles, every bus packed with irritable women lugging home wrapping paper. She was not at her best but, these days, who is? The Tufnell Park lifts were down so she trudged up the windy Kentish Town elevator, noticed it had started to pour, sighed unkindly as a man fussed at the turnstiles, caught the eye of the woman beside her.
They frowned in vague recognition and then Priya had said: ‘I know who you are’ and they’d started chatting as they waited for the torrent to pass. By the time she’d put up her umbrella they were laughing and Lucia thought: Oh, she’s not so scary.
‘I’m this way,’ Lucia said, gesturing right.
‘I’m down there. Oh well. Tell you what, come for a drink,’ said Priya.
‘What, now?’
‘Why not? Rare I’m out so early, time on my hands.’
‘I should . . .’
‘Come on. I’m bored easily.’
‘OK, I think,’ said Lucia. ‘I’ll just send a . . . a text,’ and Priya smirked.
She led her, talking, all the way down Prince of Wales Road, under the railway bridge and down a narrow lane, picturesquely ashy London brickwork at odd angles, closed-up workshops, a sign saying G&D IRON SMELTING SCRAP. ‘Reminds me of the places I grew up,’ Priya said. ‘I didn’t know anyone in London, then I saw Queen’s Crescent and felt at home. For what that’s worth.’
‘I know,’ said Lucia.
Her house was shut and still. Big multi-paned windows glinting in the street lights like a little factory; not the usual dull shrubs at the front but, mostly, banana-plant. Lucia smiled.
‘Like it?’ said Priya.
‘Oh, yes. Very much.’
‘Let’s get you inside, then,’ said Priya, and she unlocked the heavy door.
What did Lucia expect? A dim messy living room not unlike her own, wine, confidences, pools of light as they semi-reclined on one of those corner sofas. When she saw Priya Menon’s glossy white kitchen table and yellow tulips, smelled clean air, she knew coming here was a mistake. Priya Menon can talk to anyone; she’d soon realize Lucia was nothing special. Already Lucia felt dense with clumsiness: all the usual earnest enthusiasms, her lack of coolness about anything, and also for her hubristic, unjustified, imaginary version of the evening in which they would have: what? Become friends?
It was nothing like that.
They drank tea; ‘I have,’ Priya said, ‘nothing but old mayonnaise and vodka. And a kettle.’
‘That’s not good. Don’t . . . don’t you eat? I eat.’
‘Christ. Loads.’
‘I’m very greedy,’ said Lucia, and Priya lifted her eyebrows.
‘Well, me too, but I’m either out for dinner or staggering back at midnight. It’s a takeaway or nothing. Although I am strangely drawn to a sandwich toaster.’
Lucia watched herself gesturing, trying to brush off the clay-handprint on her trousers, expecting the warmth to dissolve into an awkward exchange of personal experiences, like unsuccessful tribal negotiations. But Priya answered every question, asked even more back. She gossiped, swore, discovered a hole in her woollen tights and before Lucia’s very eyes darned it.
‘Of course I can sew,’ she said. ‘MPs are like sailors; it’s all about emergency repairs. Sewing-kits and plasters and shoes in every cupboard. Obviously the good ones swap with each other.’
‘Are you friends with any . . . Tories?’ asked Lucia.
‘Of course! To a point. Don’t you sew for your work?’
‘A bit,’ Lucia said cautiously.
‘But it’s not needlepoint.’
‘Christ, no. Massive Frankenstein stitches. But only sometimes. It’s mostly wax and rubbish and sticks.’
‘Of course,’ Priya said, ‘I know your work.’
‘Do you?’
‘You look amazed. But not your husband’s.’
‘Oh. That’s not the usual . . . I mean, it’s complicated.’
‘Hmm,’ said Priya. ‘Well. I’ve been hoping to spot you.’
She had the sort of brain one wants to fall inside. The laughing and the openness were what Lucia remembered, afterwards. Aren’t MPs supposed to be discreet? They discussed the point at which prime ministers go mad; the curvature of the earth; rigor mortis; Midlands Hindus versus London Hindus (‘ve-ry different. But the Midlands are treated poorer in everything, you must know that?’); if lavender is edible; cultural signifiers of status (‘for us it was plastic-covered furniture and unaffordable cars’); Priya’s mother (‘difficult. Horrible past’) and grandmother (‘still did all our cooking at ninety-eight, that’s why I can’t’) but not her father, who had been, Lucia deduced, an engineering student from Gujarat. ‘Died young, they all do. But Keralan women live for ever.’ Her language was very precise; she used her hands. She was fiercer than she had expected, more piratical. She told Lucia about the closing of domestic-abuse shelters, abortion-clinic security, running away from home at sixteen, the impossibility of getting changed in her Westminster office because the blind covered only half of the overlooked window, ‘but I do it anyway. It’s only other MPs. Perks them up.’
