Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘John-Paul?’ I almost shout.

  ‘Yeah. Weird name, isn’t it? Though that’s why Seton chose him in the first place. It seemed so odd to me, I mean totally incredible. I was scared he’d found some screwball who’d only make him worse. It wasn’t pure unselfishness on my part. Seton was working as my framer and a bloody good one too, so I didn’t want to lose him, or see him more fucked up, or even …’

  ‘Working?’ I’ve interrupted twice, repeated Zack’s words twice, but I’m astonished by those words – first John-Paul, then a job. Seton continually assured me that all paid work was beneath him; said he lived on some (vague) legacy from an (even vaguer) relative. And he always let me rant about my shrink, even drove me to the station for my sessions in the tower, yet never once admitted he’d been consulting him as well.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Zack drains his cup. ‘He’s been my framer for a good twelve years or more – on and off, of course, depending on his mental state. But when he works, he really works – all day, all night, all out – doesn’t seem to bother with things like meals or sleep. I suppose it’s an obsession, but quite a useful one this time – damn good for his employer, anyway.’ Zack laughs cynically, wipes his fingers on his handkerchief as if the cup has somehow soiled them.

  ‘And John-Paul?’ I ask, obsessed myself.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The doctor.’ (Fuck the Pope.)

  ‘Well, I thought I’d better check the fellow out, which wasn’t easy, actually, since these trick-cyclist chaps seem to keep the lowest of low profiles. But I’m a pretty good detective, and surprisingly (since I was expecting Woody Allen crossed with Shylock), he turned out to be quite sound – in fact, one guy I consulted said he’d rate him among the ten best shrinks in London.’

  I choke on my last biscuit crumbs. ‘What?’ I say, jumping to my feet.

  Zack looks startled. Why am I so vehement? What is it to me? I suddenly decide to tell him the whole story – well, not quite ‘whole’ – I always censor everything, even with John-Paul, withhold a few key facts. But things are getting so involved, if I don’t come clean and tell more or less the truth for once, I’ll just tie myself in circles even further, never solve the mysteries: discover why Seton is in hospital at all, and what makes Zack describe an untrained pseudo-artist as one of the ten best shrinks in London.

  ‘Artist?’ Zack exclaims, once I’ve galloped through my history as fast as all the complications and my still aching head allow.

  ‘Yes, artist, artist, artist! The one whose bloody pictures I’ve just bought.’ I’m shouting now, waving both my arms around, my anger surging back. Several people stare, though the serving girls just shrug, continue filling cups or clearing tables. I suppose they’re used to scenes here.

  ‘But you bought Jane Steiner’s pictures.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nial, you’re crazy! No one else in my entire career as gallery-owner has ever bought every single painting in a show, and then not known the artist’s name.’

  I subside on my red chair again – red for danger. Zack just called me crazy and I suspect he’s probably right. Am I dreaming this whole evening and things will only make some sense once I’ve woken from the nightmare, or am I totally deranged? ‘But they were signed JPS,’ I mutter.

  ‘Yes, why not? Jane Priscilla Steiner. She hates the Priscilla, actually. I call her that when I want to needle her.’ He grins, sounds sort of fond.

  ‘Is she your bloody girlfriend, Zack?’ I’m on my feet again. I’ll murder her, as well, find out her address and march round there straight away, pay her out for buggering me up, wasting all my money.

  ‘Good God, no! She doesn’t even like men.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘She’s a lesbian, the butch kind – a rather lively girl, in fact, though it’s a pity she can’t paint.’

  ‘Can’t paint?’ I kick my chair-rung. I’m totting up the price of all those pictures; that precious hard-earned money I’ve chucked straight down the drain. And not just cash – emotion – all the energy and fury it took to slash the canvases; all the love and hate I felt for them, when they weren’t John-Paul’s at all. I shudder at the memory, recalling their dark spell; the way they undermined me, tainted me, infected me, so that I became a different person, a shadow-person, suffocating, cut off from the world. I turn on Zack again, try to hide my bitterness with a brief sarcastic shrug. ‘So why waste your valuable wall-space on an artist who can’t paint?’

  ‘Well, she’s got energy, at least, and loads of sort of guts, and the Council were behind her – gave her a year as artist-in-residence at the local Arts Centre, where she churned out all that stuff. This is Brent, remember, so she was probably subsidised not so much for her huge artistic talent as for the fact she was a radical lesbian feminist. Anyway, Brent were quite impressed and agreed to arrange a show for her. But just when all the plans were made, the Arts Centre closed down – the usual problem: lack of cash – so they got on to me instead. It wasn’t easy to say no when my lease was running out, and I needed their goodwill not only to renew it, but to save my precious gallery. They own the whole damn block, you see, and there was talk of redevelopment.’

  Zack crumples up his plastic cup as if the memory appals him, rocks back in his chair. ‘Well, of course I held the show, even included their second little protegee, the sculptress Lovena Ross – another lousy artist, but a Marxist activist, this time, and a single-parent disadvantaged black. I’ve never known Brent sponsor any right-of-centre heterosexual whites, but …’ He grins down at the wreckage of his cup. ‘Who cares who the heck they are, so long as I’m in business still. Actually, I was really rather chuffed when you bought up the whole show. I’d resigned myself to selling one or two, at most, and had already written off my losses, then you popped up out of nowhere and did wonders for my bank balance, not to mention Jane’s.’

  ‘I loathe the bloody woman!’

  ‘You don’t know her, Nial. You thought she was John-Paul. I still can’t understand that. Didn’t you see her name on the invitation card?’

  ‘I didn’t get an invitation card.’

  ‘Well, the receipt, then?’

  ‘It wasn’t on the receipt.’

  ‘Okay, the price-list at the show itself. No, it wasn’t on there either, come to think of it – just the titles and the prices. God! This is quite ridiculous. What I just can’t understand is why you should connect John-Paul with the pictures in the first place – apart from just the initials which prove absolutely nothing. I mean, there must be thousands of JPSs in Brent alone, and if you include the rest of London …’

  ‘Seton,’ I say grimly. ‘He told me it was John-Paul’s show.’

  Zack lets out a noise which is half a yelp of disbelief, half a bitter laugh. ‘Christ! He must be bad – I mean totally obsessed. For years and years I heard nothing but John-Paul – what he said, why he …’

  ‘How long did Seton go, then?’

  ‘Oh, a good ten years, at least.’

  ‘Ten?’ I’m aghast. ‘If John-Paul’s so bloody marvellous, then why isn’t Seton cured?’

  ‘Actually, I reckon he was brave to take him on at all. He’s pretty batty sometimes, and a lot of shrinks won’t touch psychotic patients, run a mile from anything which smacks of schizophrenia. It means too much damn hard work, and it’s seldom that rewarding. They can slave for years, apparently, and then just one brief crisis can undo any progress, dump the wretched patient back in hospital again.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘I’ve had to, haven’t I – with Seton round my neck for twenty years? We met at art school, actually, when he was pretty bloody talented, but still a basic nutcase. And anyway …’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we’re closing. I’ve let you sit here far longer than I should have, but if I don’t lock up now, I’ll catch it.’

  A woman with a dishcloth is swabbing us away. She’s got her coat on over her apron, and a look which
says ‘No argument’. I’ve been so absorbed in Zack, I haven’t even noticed that the canteen is almost empty, the counter stripped and shrouded, machines and music dumb. I struggle up reluctantly, clinging on to Zack, though it’s not support I need now, just more information. I don’t want this guy to vanish before I’ve checked out certain facts, so when he offers to drive me home I accept enthusiastically. It’s a pretty lengthy drive, in fact, so we should tie up some loose ends before we reach my pad.

  As we tramp back down the corridor, I suddenly start laughing quite hysterically, have to stop a moment while I clutch my sides, the wall.

  ‘Nial, you’re mad! What now?’

  I’m not mad – that’s the joy of it. I’ve lost a score of rivals – all those black girls at the show were Lovena Ross’s groupies, not John-Paul’s ex-mistresses. And the Amandas and the Cressidas weren’t his rotten Marys, but radical lesbian feminists who’d come to flirt with Jane. I now understand the boiler-suits, the dungarees, the sheer preponderance of females. And were they really all that gorgeous? They seemed so at the time, of course, but only because every girl connected with John-Paul is immediately given a face-lift in my mind (followed by a boob-lift and all-over body sculpture); transformed into an amalgam of Aphrodite, Helen of Troy and the latest 38-22-36 Miss World. But they weren’t connected – not at all. John-Paul’s far too busy struggling near-heroically with schizophrenic cases to bother with mere art. I’m so relieved I haven’t harmed him, haven’t slashed his paintings or murdered all his women, I go swooping up the corridor, can’t wait for Zack to catch me up, skitter back, still hooting.

  ‘Hey! Let’s go out to dinner. My treat.’ (I haven’t any money, but I can always pay by credit card.)

  ‘But you’re ill, Nial.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ I feel completely better, a different person, actually – and I mean that literally. All the sickness, faintness, madness, seem just a ploy, a nightmare; something I invented to win myself attention, or destroy myself, or hurt myself, or all the other things I do which John-Paul calls self-punitive. No more need for punishment or pain. I’ll go the other way, in fact – indulge. ‘Listen, Zack, I’m starving, I mean absolutely ravenous. I haven’t eaten for a week, which is probably why I fainted. Let’s go and find a restaurant and pig our way through the biggest, richest, most disgustingly outrageous meal we’ve had in both our lives, with waiters prancing round us and at least a dozen different courses and one of those huge menus with tooled red leather covers like the collected works of Shakespeare and … Oh, don’t refuse, Zack, please.’

  I hug him – yes, right there in the passage – fling my arms around him and squeeze him tight, to stifle his objections. A passing nurse looks daggers, but she doesn’t understand. I’m hugging not a fat-cat super-salesman, who looks comically embarrassed and is worried for his hair, but one of the ten best shrinks in London.

  Chapter Twenty One

  ‘More salad?’ asks the waiter.

  I shake my head. I’ve hardly eaten anything. Forget the dozen courses – even one has proved too much. Actually, we never made the restaurant and Zack’s the only waiter, tripping in his shirt sleeves from his ultra-modern kitchen to his ultra-stylish sitting-room. I hardly even noticed it the first time I was here – barely noticed anything except my thumping head. But now I’m compos mentis I can take in my surroundings. Carpet, walls and sofa are all the same rich shade of cream, like his car is cream, his trousers, and the cheesy-eggy-soufflé thing he served up on the coffee table (which is darker cream-streaked marble and looks frighteningly expensive). If you could buy cream lettuce, I’m sure he would have done so, but he’s settled for that crinkly reddish stuff which fashion-cooks prefer to flat green cos, and added trendy extras like pine nuts and capsicums and some suspicious-looking fungoids which I offload to my handbag once he’s safely in the kitchen.

  I’m meant to eat just plain food – he told me so himself, when he made his worthy little speech about the dangers of a heavy meal after a period of fasting, and how if we went back to his own place and avoided ‘risky’ restaurants, he could rustle up something light and nourishing. I didn’t believe a word of it – I’ve known too many men – but I was so keen to talk about John-Paul, I said ‘Fine. Why not? You’re on.’ I still haven’t quite decided whether he’s an unprincipled self-seeker out for the main chance, or a closet do-gooder trying to disguise his softish centre in a hard shell of outward cynicism. It hardly matters, really, since he’s not my type at all, either in looks or basic style. His appeal is strictly limited to his connection with my lover and his knowledge of John-Paul. Still, I must confess I’m flattered that he appears to fancy me– enough to lure me home and take this trouble – especially now I’m pollarded (though if he mixes with butch feminists, then perhaps my ragged haircut may not seem extreme). I also wonder if he minds my being taller – only by an inch or so, but all the same, guys like him usually prefer to look down on their females.

  Perhaps that’s why he wouldn’t let me help, just arranged me on the sofa, strictly horizontally, while he launched into his chefs act just off-stage. At last, he’s come to join me and is wolfing down his salad, while I push mine round the plate – yes, floral and bone china. Although my stomach won’t co-operate, I’ve been swamping him with compliments: what a fantastic cook he is, and how I’ve never had potatoes so fluffy-light and buttery. That’s true, in fact, and the souffle was quite perfect (kept its erection, so to speak, and ejaculated-cream). The compliments are genuine, but like most men’s flattery to females, they’re double-edged, and I’m using them for barter. I’ve traded three ‘Fantastic!’s for more of Seton’s history (especially his last fortnight, which appears to have transformed him from a tiger to a zombie), and I’m now starting on John-Paul’s. I’ve got an easy entree. When I went to use Zack’s loo (also rose-sprigged Meissen – or something pretty close to it), I passed through a sort of hall place which was hung with scores of paintings, including two or three like the ones in Seton’s boat and John-Paul’s tower. Those damn pictures seem to haunt me. I just can’t get away from them. If I moved to Timbuktu or Torremolinos, would I still find them on the walls?

  Anyway, I question Zack about them, once we reach the cheese and fruit, and he confirms they’re rather special and then reveals (astonishingly) that he himself sold them to John-Paul, to hang in his consulting-room. He knew the worthy doctor wasn’t exactly short of cash, and his detective work disclosed that he was also a bit of a collector, so ever-prudent Zachary puts him on the mailing list. It seems once he’d done his probing for the sake of wretched Seton, he then decided to exploit it for himself. Though he never breathed a word, of course, about his connection with a patient, just kept sending invitation cards, until, two or three years later, John-Paul actually turned up at the private view of an artist called Phil Dyer, who’d become the toast of fashionable London, partly because of extremely good publicity in a whole rash of magazines, and partly because he was confined to a wheelchair and painted with the brush strapped to his hand.

  ‘Another lousy artist,’ I say, a mite sarcastically, removing an outsize pip from an outsize grape with a fantastic purple bloom.

  Zack bridles. ‘No, a brilliant one. I may hang rubbish at the gallery, if the Council twists my arm, but never in my own place, Nial.’

  ‘But they’re just the same as – what d’you call her? – Jane’s.’

  ‘Like Jane’s? You must be joking! Phil’s are in another league entirely. Okay, they’re both abstract, both muted in their colours and pretty free with the brush, but there the resemblance ends.’

  I say nothing for a moment. I’m not only humiliated by my obvious shaming ignorance, but also I feel nervous at how misleading most things are. Those pictures looked the same, quite apart from Seton’s leg-pull, or lie, or fit of madness (or however one describes it), which confused me even more. How can we trust anything: our eyes, our minds, our lovers? Can I even trust Zack himself on anything he’s said so fa
r, yet here I am still hanging on his words? He’s explaining why John-Paul was drawn to Dyer in the first place – because he spent half his early life in a mental institution, when he was actually a genius – a case of wrong diagnosis, as it were.

  ‘Look, is John-Paul married?’ I suddenly blurt out.

  Zack looks a little nonplussed, but I’m sick of pictures actually. There are far more vital things to check – John-Paul’s wives or ex-wives, the whole issue of his expertise and training.

  ‘No, he lives alone.’

  ‘But was he married?’

  ‘What is this, Nial, an inquisition?’

  ‘No – yes, if you like. There’s this … er … girl I know who fancies him and she asked me to …’

  ‘Tell her not to waste her time. The man lives entirely for his work. Apart from his collecting, which is extremely sporadic anyway – he’s ignored every invitation I’ve sent since Dyer’s show – there’s zilch else but patients in his life.’

  ‘And dogs?’ I ask.

  ‘Dogs?’ Zack peels a grape, which looks more like an eyeball as he transfers it to his mouth.

  ‘Wolfhounds?’

  Zack stops chewing in surprise. ‘I shouldn’t think so, no. The only time we met he admitted he was a cat-man, and wolfhounds eat cats, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say with feeling, then suddenly relax, push my plate away, sink down on the cushions. There were no dogs, no wolfhounds. Of course I didn’t kill them. They were never there to kill. It was my shadow-self which killed them in its mind – shadow-dogs, mere hallucinations. I’m so relieved I loll right back, let out a great laugh. Zack swoops on me immediately, abandons grapes and Camembert, tries to plug my open mouth with his. He misses, tries again. I let him have his wet and slobbery kiss. I never kiss my clients, but he’s not a client, is he, and I’m actually not there. He can have my mouth and body – my soul and self and essence are back on John-Paul’s couch.