‘Yes, yes of course I would… Please!’ No one had ever interviewed him, not since he was revealed as Carcha.
‘Good; my place in Cornwall, day after tomorrow. Shall we say 8.00 pm?’
He hadn’t given her the address but then he didn’t need to. It was a matter of public record, and she was a journalist after all.
The house was directly on the coast. Debra allowed plenty of time, not wanting to risk traffic jams or any other delay. The route was straightforward enough: M4 to Bristol, M5 to Exeter, and then the A30, skirting Dartmoor, to St Austell, where she’d booked a room for the night. She left North London in the morning, heading off as soon as the worst of rush hour had cleared, and arrived in St Austell mid-afternoon.
Then it was just a matter of killing time.
Despite the temptation, she hadn’t tried to sell the interview in advance or even to gauge editors’ interest. ‘There’s no need, trust me,’ Dominic had said when she phoned to tell him of the unexpected opportunity. The realisation that, with both of her parents passed away, Dominic was the only person with whom she could share such thrilling news came as a sobering one. ‘Wait until you’ve done the interview before you start trying to hawk it around,’ Dominic advised. ‘Then you’ll have actual sound bites to tempt editors with. An interview with Ryan Turner? They’ll flock around this like gulls to a trawler, squabbling for the spoils. I’m so thrilled for you, pet.’ He was right, of course.
Even so, on the drive out to Turner’s house she was afflicted by doubts: what if he’d forgotten? What if he hadn’t meant the invitation seriously, or was expecting her to phone ahead and confirm? She hadn’t, reasoning that without a direct number she would only get through to an assistant or an agent – the smart-looking woman or her spiritual sister – and be deflected, put off. So she came here cold, relying on the tenuous thread of an unconfirmed invitation spoken in haste.
Turner’s home stood on a rocky promontory, accessible via a narrow track that she missed at first in the fading light, hidden as it was between two cottages. They were the last two habitations she passed and the winding track proved an adventure in itself for someone more accustomed to urban roads, particularly where it skirted a perilously steep drop to the ocean on her right. There were no streetlights out here, of course, and Debra was grateful that she had again set out early and so was able to take this at a crawl.
Situated at the end of the peninsula, the property, when she finally arrived after a mile or more of hesitant progress, proved to be a wonder. She’d expected something traditional given the setting – tall white walls nestling among established trees, pantile roof and brick-built chimneys – but this was nothing of the sort.
Sensors triggered as she pulled up outside, bathing the house in light. The walls were all grey and glass – the grey looking as if it might have been hewn from local stone – and curved, as if to acknowledge the undulations of the surrounding countryside. The flat-roofed storeys were arranged one upon another in diminishing size like layers on a wedding cake, the whole seemingly embedded in the rock of the promontory itself, with grasses and plants spilling over the edge of the third and uppermost floor. A ‘green’ house, eco-friendly, one that seemed wholly appropriate despite its disdain of tradition.
After a final reassuring glance through Turner’s profile, Debra seized her courage, took a deep breath and climbed out the car. Halfway to the door a title finally popped into her head: Carcha; of course, the artist’s name. No other label was necessary.
The door opened while she was still a few paces away, and Turner stood before her, all smiles and charm, just as he’d been at the gallery. ‘Please, call me Ryan,’ and she was ushered inside, to gaze around a spacious open-plan living room, minimalist and modern in furnishing and décor. The walls were dominated by ceiling-to-floor windows: vast expanses of glass that must have facilitated spectacular views in the daytime. Double glazed or maybe triple, because inside everything was warmth and calm despite the buffeting winds that were inevitable in such an exposed location.
They sat and sipped from elegant glasses; white wine that was chilled, crisp, and light. At first the conversation was relaxed, with Turner sharing anecdotes about his life as a biologist and within the world of TV. The reason she was here, his artwork, barely getting a mention.
At length he said, ‘Now, the interview; I presume you’ll want to record it?’
‘Please.’
‘That’s fine, and you can ask me anything, anything at all.’
‘Thank you. There is one thing I’d like to know, before we start. Why me?’
‘Ah, well.’ Again that smile, inviting trust and promising reassurance.
‘You could have earned a fortune from one of the major glossies,’ she persisted, ‘had your pick of interviewers, and yet, you approached me.’
‘You intrigued me,’ he said, simply. ‘At the gallery, I mean. True, I could have gone to one of the magazines, negotiated a lucrative fee for an exclusive, but…’ He gestured around the room, ‘I’m hardly in need of the money, to be frank. The books and TV work have paid well, and now that I’ve taken a break from them my paintings seem to be doing okay, for the moment at least.’
She laughed, on cue.
‘Given a choice between spending a few hours in the company of a crusty, cynical reporter who’s seen it all before and is inclined to denigrate rather than investigate, or perhaps some gushing sycophant… Given a choice of that or an inquisitive and pretty young lady such as yourself…’ He shrugged. ‘You’re bright, fresh, hungry, and an opportunity like this might genuinely benefit you rather than becoming just another feather in an already crowded cap. I’m in the privileged position of being able to do whatever the hell I like, as opposed to what the bank balance dictates, and what I like is you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Besides, Dominic vouched for you.’
That last caught her by surprise. ‘Dominic? You know Dominic…? And he vouched for me how exactly?’
Turner laughed. ‘Nothing lascivious, I promise you. Yes, I know Dominic, who doesn’t? He merely confirmed that you’d be ideal.’
‘For what?’ And when had he spoken to Dominic – before or after the preview? Had their encounter two nights ago been something other than the fortuitous accident she’d supposed?
He sat forward, eager, excited, almost conspiratorial. ‘To share with the world what I do, what makes my work so different. You’d like to play a part in that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she blurted, caught up in his enthusiasm.
‘Good!’ And he sprang to his feet. ‘Then I’ll show you. I’ve a feeling we’re both going to benefit from working closely together.’
She smiled but didn’t otherwise respond, having concluded at outset that the little black dress had as much to do with her being here as any altruism on Turner’s part.
‘Come, come…’ He picked up the bottle of wine from the table and gestured for her to follow.
Still clutching her own glass, she scrambled to her feet and hurried in pursuit, as her host strode to a flight of chrome-banistered stairs that swept downwards in a great curve, too gentle and too brief to be considered a spiral. These led to another floor that was clearly beneath the level of the road.
Debra heard water before she saw it, and smelled it too: the sea. A great pool occupied fully two thirds of the expansive room they entered; the water level a foot or so below the floor. Rather than being flat and still like a swimming pool, the surface stirred restlessly. She realised too that this was simply a gallery or mezzanine. To one side, a far more modest flight of steps led down to a lower level still, and it was towards this that Turner headed. She hesitated, taking the opportunity to look around. Two easels of differing sizes rested against a wall; there was a long low work table which held a laptop at its centre and a unit of free-standing drawers stacked at one end
– they might have housed anything: paints, pallets, brushes – and beside the table a tall cabinet. Dominating the wall above all this was a familiar image.
‘Sharkadelic,’ she murmured.
Turner paused and looked back. ‘Yes, this is where I painted it, where I do all my work.’
She noticed then that there were windows on the far side of the pool, covered by blinds at this hour. Although the room might be below the road, those windows clearly looked out at something, perhaps granting a view of the sea. Yes, she could imagine that; Turner sitting here gazing out at the ocean with water sloshing directly beside him as he conjured his latest extraordinary composition.
‘That’s just a copy, of course, a print,’ he said, coming to stand beside her. ‘Put up when the original was taken down for the exhibition in London, though that’ll be back here soon enough, once the exhibition closes. This is one painting I won’t part with, though I still have every intention of producing better.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ she said, her eyes lingering on the unsettling, compelling picture.
‘I plan to start on a new piece shortly.’
‘Called…?
‘Ah, that would be telling. You could even visit while I work on it, if you like. The first person to ever witness what I do, to be involved in the creative process. Do you think that might interest your readers?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Of course.’
He laughed and, putting the bottle of wine and his glass down on the table, took her hand, pulling her towards the next flight of steps. She didn’t resist; wouldn’t dream of resisting. This was another side of Ryan Turner, a gleeful, excited child that nothing in her research had prepared her for.
The steps hugged the side of the pool, which proved to be made of glass, reminding Debra of visits to the aquarium as a kid.
‘This is much deeper than you’d imagine,’ Turner explained. ‘The tank is connected directly to the sea, though a simple system of airlocks, or waterlocks I suppose in this instance, ensures that the water level isn’t dependent on the tides.’
‘Why go to all this trouble and expense, though?’ she wanted to know.
Before he could answer, a great shadow shot past on the other side of the glass. Her mind grasped at familiar possibilities – sea lion, dolphin – rejecting each instantly. She knew at some instinctive level what this was. ‘Shark!’ she blurted.
‘Yes!’ He laughed, clearly delighted at her reaction. ‘Carcharodon carcharias to be precise, the Great White Shark, King of the Sea – the mightiest, meanest fish in all the oceans.’
She stared at him. ‘And you’ve brought one here?’
‘I didn’t bring it anywhere. The great white’s been visiting these shores for decades, many a Cornish fisherman will tell you that. It was already here. I simply invited it in.’
‘But why?’
‘For my work, of course. I’ll show you.’
He led an unresisting Debra back up to the room at the top of the pool.
‘This is my secret.’ Releasing her hand, he went across to the table, opening up and switching on the laptop. ‘This is how I paint.’
Images appeared of the screen, black and white footage that she quickly realised represented a view inside the pool. She watched, a little fearful but fascinated, as something crossed the screen.
‘Sharks are remarkable creatures you know, much maligned,’ Turner said. ‘If I could erase one thing from the world’s social consciousness it would be Spielberg’s Jaws. That film did sharks a terrible disservice and embedded a fear of them into our cultural psyche, prejudicing us at every turn. Galeophobia, we call it. Might as well be Jawsophobia.’
‘You don’t think the fear was already present then,’ Debra countered, ‘that Jaws and its sequels, and The Reef, and all the shark-themed schlock horrors that came after them, simply drew on an existing condition, exploiting what was already present for artistic and commercial effect? After all, sharks do kill people.’
‘Artistic?’ He snorted. ‘Please…’
She was conscious of the risk – the last thing she wanted to do was provoke hostility and cause him to clam up – but she was a journalist: he’d presented her with an emotional button that just cried out to be pushed. No point in alienating him, though, so she smiled. ‘Fair comment. I’ve seen Sharknado.’
‘Sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years,’ Turner said, ignoring her aside, ‘since long before anything we’d recognise as animals colonised the land. And in that time they’ve evolved. Slower than we have, perhaps, but they’ve been at it for a hell of a lot longer. The first examples of what we’d recognise as sharks appeared about 100 million years ago, did you know that? And since then they’ve diversified without really evolving much further, or so perceived wisdom would have us believe.’
‘You don’t agree?’
‘Not for the first time, perceived wisdom is flawed. The ‘experts’ have taken the broad view. There are some 470 species of shark in the world, each occupying a specific niche, varying in size from the lantern shark at less than twenty centimetres to the whale shark, the biggest fish in the seas, which can grow up to twelve metres or more. We still know very little about many of these species but assume that we do because we know so much about a few of them. In our arrogance, we extrapolate from our limited data to make assumptions about all sharks. Look at it this way. If you were to study in detail the evolution of most of the great apes – gorillas, chimpanzees, orang-utans etcetera – and assume this tells you everything you need to know about the evolution of all the apes, how wide of the mark would you be regarding one species in particular: humans? That’s the trap we’ve fallen into. There’s one species of shark that has developed intellectually far beyond its fellows and far beyond anything we’ve ever contemplated.’
‘The great white,’ she guessed.
‘Exactly. All right, so the great white never built cities or cars or planes, or any of the trappings we associate with civilisation – that’s not the direction in which its intellect lies and it has no capacity for such things: no feet, no hands, no jointed digits... But it doesn’t need them. What a shark does need is the intelligence to remain apex hunter in a vast and ever evolving environment, to keep ahead of the game, and that it undoubtedly does possess.
‘Are you aware that there’s at least one pod of killer whales out there that specialises in hunting sharks, even preying on great whites?’
She shook her head.
‘Orcas teach hunting skills to their young, passing specific techniques down through the generations, and this particular pod has developed specialised methods of preying on sharks, which aren’t generally a staple of the killer’s diet. Instances of them taking out a great white are rare, but here’s the really exciting thing: whenever it does occur, every great white in the area vanishes, fleeing that part of the ocean for months, until the shark killers have moved on. You see what that means? Communication; intelligence. This has been known about for years, yet still none of the so-called experts have made the connection; still they fail to realise that here is the ocean’s apex intelligence, just as we are the land’s. People assume that dolphins are the bright ones, but they’re playful, frivolous, capricious. If you want focused intellect then we’re talking sharks, and great whites have taken that to a whole different level.’
Debra hadn’t known what to expect from the interview, but this definitely wasn’t it. ‘And this realisation is what enables you to create your paintings?’ she said, wanting to be entirely clear on the point.
‘Yes, look.’ He turned to the laptop again, freezing the image as the shark passed in front of the lens.
She stared, trying to interpret the flat, ill-defined image. There was something odd… ‘What’s that on its head?’
‘A neural web.’ He bent over the keyboard again and the
black and white image vanished to be replaced by a vivid scape of coalescing colours, resembling a crude representation of one of Carcha’s paintings, an initial draft. ‘The shark wears the net quite willingly and is now, in effect, communing directly with the computer.’
She stared at the screen as comprehension dawned.
‘Sharks experience the world very differently from us,’ he continued. ‘They share our five senses – smell, taste, hearing, touch, and sight – but in the ocean light and sound move at different angles and speeds than they do through the air. Added to which, sharks have two further senses that we can barely comprehend; they can sense electrical pulses and pick up both vibrations and pressure changes. So a shark’s perception of its environment is utterly different from ours; more refined, more complete, more complex.’
‘And that’s what you paint,’ Debra whispered.
‘Exactly!’ From somewhere, presumably a drawer or the cupboard, Turner had produced a skullcap of fine gold wiring, which he now fitted over his head while continuing to explain. ‘The computer records each evolving image as the shark interprets its environment, and by wearing this I can share the patterns as they develop. I paint by a combination of direct organic feed and studying the stored images. Carcha’s work represents the first ever collaboration between two different species: a human and a great white shark – the King of the Land and the King of the Sea. That’s Carcha’s true secret, but who would believe it?’
Debra shook her head. ‘I had no idea.’ And he’d chosen her to tell the world.
‘Of course you didn’t, no one does.’ He took her wine glass, still clutched in her right hand, all but forgotten, and refilled it from the bottle, picking up his own drink and raising it in salute. ‘A toast: to our new relationship and the work we will produce together.’
She sipped, then gulped, reassured by the familiar action and taste.
Turner drifted away, to stand at the lip of the pool.
‘There’s a whole new world opening up, one that nobody’s ever dreamed of before. The paintings are just the beginning. Soon I’ll move into video art, interactive experiences…’
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