He shrugs his shiny red shoulders and runs his hand across his scalp in a manner so reminiscent of Brando’s Mr Kurtz that it’s difficult not to take it as a reference. ‘Well...’ he says.
I’ve known Lenny since I was seventeen, and he was going bald even then. But Lenny being Lenny it’s never been a problem cos he’s got the head for it and it suits him cos he’s a handsome fucker. He was handsome back then and he’s handsome now. More handsome now than then. And he’ll carry on being handsome. The older he gets the more handsome he becomes. He’ll be handsome in middle age and he’ll be a handsome pensioner. An ’exquisite corpse’. Bald and handsome. All the more handsome for being bald. All the more bald for being handsome. Whatever that means. It’s a pain in the arse.
‘Sorry’
‘What?’ says Lenny.
‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘sorry for saying fuck off.’
He looks at me. And then he looks off to the side of me.
‘It’s OK.’ I’ve been in therapy for the past three months and so far she’s taught me to apologize.
‘And sorry for crying.’
‘You’ve always been very emotional,’ says Lenny and stands.
I stand too. ‘You say that like it’s a criticism.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘no I don’t,’ and wanders out through the door. We’re back in the lobby. He reaches into his pocket and drops a coin into the donations box. A gaggle of Japanese schoolgirls waddle over and beg him to sign their gallery maps. He pulls out a gold fountain pen and gets down to it. Twelve in all. I try to catch his eye so that we can smirk at each other, but he’s having none of it. Smirking, it seems, is a thing of the past. He’s got his head down and he’s asking them their names.
Outside the sky has darkened into a blurred and sooty purple. The river is salted with seagulls. I love seagulls. They remind me of home.
‘I love seagulls,’ I say, ‘they remind me of Blackpool.’
‘Being told not to pick up dirty feathers off the tram tracks, that’s what they remind me of,’ he says and lights a fag.
We’re almost at the bottom of the steps when this young French couple ask if they can have their photograph taken with Lenny. They ‘appreciated’ his show in Marseilles and would love to have their photograph taken with him. Lenny goes all bashful in his red leather coat-jacket, china-blue buttons, puts his arms around their shoulders and indicates that they should hand the camera to me.
I take it. That’s what I do.
It’s been raining all day and the river sits nicely with the puddled embankment. The couple embrace. Terrible teeth the two of them. And there’s Lenny peeping over the top. The girl’s gone mad and grabbed his hand.
I frame them out. That’s what I do. I crop the river and the top half of their bodies. I take them from the waist down, their silly French shoes on tiptoe and Lenny in his Californian Docs, and some scabby pigeon pecking at a bus ticket. That’s what they’ll get when they pick up their prints.
I pass them back their camera and smile. They return the smile and almost bow.
On we go. Lenny removes his specs and dries them on a scrap of pink velvet. He replaces them with august ceremony and stares out across the river.
‘St Paul’s,’ he whispers, ‘sublime.’
How come he needs these specs to look at paintings and to walk around the streets in? OK, so sometimes he takes them off to look at a painting, but most of the time he leaves them on, and he wears them to read, but then he drives in them and watches films in them. So what’s going on with these specs? What kind of specs are they?
He found them, he says, under some floorboards in the Chelsea Hotel. What he was doing lifting up floorboards in the Chelsea Hotel, fuck knows, but he found them there and took them into some optometrists (his word, not mine) and asked them to fit his prescription. They obliged, for a price, and he’s come home in them. Ludicrous things they are; little Crippen specs, bendy silver wire, creepy, like he’s got an insect strapped to his face. ‘They’ve really changed the way I see things,’ he said the night he came back from New York. ‘They must have belonged to someone who stayed there. They could be anybody’s. Pollock once stayed there. They might have belonged to Pollock.’
‘Statistically unlikely,’ said Kirk.
‘But they might have,’ said Lenny.
‘Or they might have belonged to some Belgian pornographer called Rene,’ I said. ‘Or Nancy Spungen.’
‘Fuck you talking about?’ said Lenny, and he went quiet for a bit. Me and Kirk winked at each other and he caught us. Then he started in about his night with Koons, and then we laughed, and then he fucked off.
‘So how’s your show going?’ he asks me now. It’s something to say.
‘Fine.’
‘Where’s the gallery?’
‘Bethnal Green.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘The Doodlebug.’
‘And it’s all ready?’
‘Yeah. Nearly. I’m just finishing the self-portrait.’
He stops in his tracks. ‘Self-portrait?’ he says. ‘You finally got round to a self-portrait? That’s amazing. How is it? Happy?’
‘Happy’s not the word,’ I say, and start reading my travelcard. ‘Happy’s not the word,’ and start folding it up, cos I really want to belt him in the mouth, give him a big healthy smack in his smug, handsome gob. ‘And how’s your work going,’ I ask, ‘how’s the piece?’ and the travelcard’s the size of a stamp.
‘It’s coming along,’ he says.
‘You’ve got it all worked out, have you?’
‘I think so. It’s hard to tell. It may be something, or it may be nothing at all. I don’t really want to talk about it. Not yet.’
‘Well, fine,’ I say, missing out the rest.
Well, fine, Lenny, then don’t talk about it. Don’t debase your shitty little self. I don’t want to know anyway. I only asked cos I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I only still know you cos I’ve known you for so long.
‘And how’s Eleni?’ he says.
‘Eleni’s beautiful,’ I say, cos she is, and cos he knows she is, and cos he’s stuck with Brenda. Comical-looking Brenda who had him strapped to the banister well before he was Mr Bobby fucking Dazzler. Mental Brenda who threatens she’ll stab herself in the neck if he ever attempts to leave her. ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘Eleni’s beautiful.’
‘Great,’ he says. ‘And your mum and dad? Still trying to sell the house?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘they’ve given up. They can’t get rid of it.’
’That’s a drag.’
Fuck off, Lenny. ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘it is. But they’re fine about it. They’ve decided to change things round a bit instead.’
A cab drives past and Lenny waves it down. ‘I think I’m gonna take this,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘where’re you going?’
‘I’m meeting Jopling in Soho.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m gonna show him some sketches I’ve made for the piece.’
‘Oh.’
‘Where’re you going?’
‘I’m going to Earl’s Court to see Bianca.’
‘Who’s Bianca?’
The taxi’s got the window down and Lenny’s shouted, ‘Soho,’ at the driver.
‘She’s my therapist,’ I say.
‘Since when?’
‘Since July’
‘You never told me that.’
‘Well, you haven’t really been around, Lenny.’
‘Well . . . great, good luck er . . .’ and he hovers in the doorway. He makes a move towards me, as though he might hug me, and then he makes a sort of sideways move, as though he might not hug me. He throws out his hand, but it’s sort of the wrong way up, and I try to shake it but he does something funny with his thumbs and his knuckles and I try to join in but it all goes to pot.
‘See ya,’ he shouts as he bends himself into the cab. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘Say hello to Jay.’
‘I will.’
The taxi pulls away. I watch it as it scuttles up the road like a shifty cockroach. I can see Lenny sitting forward, bossing the driver.
Bianca makes me a cup of tea and lights the candles. She puts a sheet over the parrot and settles herself on her sofa. There are two sofas. I settle myself on my sofa. I stir my tea and take a look at myself in the back of the spoon. That wasn’t a very good idea, as it turns out.
‘So,’ she begins, ‘so how is everything? How are you and Eleni?’
‘I’ve just been walking round the Tate with Lenny,’ I say.
‘Aahhh,’ she says. Bianca is a sixty-year-old arthritic Austrian lady who smiles more than she should. ‘Aahhh,’ she says again and picks up her mug of algae, or whatever the fuck it is. ‘Lenny.’
‘Lenny,’ I repeat.
‘So he’s back from New York?’
‘Got back last week.’
‘Lenny,’ she says again, and drifts off into a reverie, taking small sips of her foul concoction.
‘Lenny Snook,’ I say, and fiddle with my lip.
‘I see, I see.’ She fixes me with her stare. ‘And you have been crying, have you not?’
2
57 NORRIS AVENUE, BLACKPOOL
‘Hector,’ yells my mum, ‘do you want some chicken?’
I’ve been vegetarian for years, she knows I have. Never slipped once, she knows that too. So what she thinks she’s doing offering me chicken I can’t tell you. She’s been offering me chicken for nearly twenty years and she’ll go on offering me chicken for another twenty, as though one day I might turn around and say oh go on then, and tuck in. I’m sick of it.
‘Did you hear me?’
Yes I heard you, Mum. ‘Mum, it’s meat. Chicken’s meat.’
‘But it’s not a cow,’ she says, appearing in the doorway of the lounge.
‘What kind of logic’s that?’ I say, pouring out the other half of my beer.
‘Ooh, you and your long words,’ she says, almost coquettishly, and flings her oven glove at me. ‘Mushrooms. You’ll eat mushrooms, won’t you?’
‘Yes, why wouldn’t I eat mushrooms?’
‘Well, I don’t know what you’re like,’ she says, and lets it hang in the air, like she means so much more. ’It’s always changing with you. One minute it’s “Yes I will have a biscuit” the next it’s “No, no, I don’t eat biscuits.” You’re drinking, and then you’re not. You’ll have sugar in your tea, next time you won’t. I don’t know if you eat mushrooms or not.’
‘Mushrooms are fine.’
‘What?’ says my dad, who’s sat in the corner watching the rugby.
‘Nothing, Dad. I just said that mushrooms are fine.’
‘Mushrooms are what?’
‘Fine, Dad,’ I say, and he frowns and tucks in his chin. He gets back to the game, turning up the volume.
‘Cos I can do you a mushroom risotto if you like.’
‘That sounds lovely, Mum.’
‘And will Eleni have that as well?’
‘Yeah, that’ll be nice.’
‘Does she not want chicken?’
‘No, Mum.’
‘But she’s not vegetarian,’ she says, scrunching up her eyes, ‘is she?’ She knows damn well she’s not, which, for some reason, she gets a kick out of.
‘No, Mum, she’s not. But she doesn’t eat much meat and she doesn’t like chicken.’
‘Doesn’t like chicken?’
‘No.’
‘I thought everyone liked chicken. I mean I can understand avoiding it if you’re set against it, like you are, but if you’re allowed it and then just not liking it, well ... I can’t imagine.’
‘Well, there you go, Mum.’
‘Do they not have chickens in Greece?’
‘Of course they have chickens in Greece.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ says Mum, ’I’ve never been to Greece, have I?’ She looks over at my dad and raises her voice. ‘Never been out of the sodding country’
‘Well, there you go, Mum.’ And suddenly I’m watching the rugby as well, even though I can’t stand it ever since I got that stud in my head at school.
‘Does she want some sausage?’
‘Mum!’ I finally do it. I’ve only been here four hours and already I’ve snapped at her.
‘Ooh, you’ve changed,’ she says, snatches back her oven glove and strides off back to the kitchen muttering, ‘I’ll do you both your rotten risotto, then,’ as she goes.
Sparky, my parents’ asthmatic, neurotic Yorkshire terrier, emerges from beneath the bureau and takes up two minutes yelping and squeaking like the sorry fucked-up mess of fluff that he is. He takes up a position on my left shoulder and stares at me with his awful leaking, rheumy brown eyes. I can smell his rank terrier breath coming at me in short stinking bursts. Ridiculous fucking specimen.
I take two big swigs on my beer and look at my dad. He’s in profile to me. It seems like he’s always been in profile to me. He’s allergic to the settee, he says, based on nothing, and so his nose is permanently clogged, his mouth permanently open with his tongue lolling out on his lower lip. He’s down on his knees by the television.
‘What are you doing, Dad?’ I say, and flick Sparky off my shoulder onto the floor.
‘Eh?’ He’s not sure whether I’ve just said something to him or if something somewhere just made a noise. He doesn’t even look at me at first, he looks towards the bookcase, like a book might have fallen down, but there are no books. We call it the bookcase but it’s filled up with little ceramic grenadiers and photographs in frames. It’s got fuck-all to do with books.
‘Dad,’ I shout, ‘it’s me,’ and he looks over. ‘I said what’s that you’re doing?’
He pushes himself up and sits on the edge of his chair. He smiles and shakes his head. I love my dad. ‘Oh, it’s a bloody nuisance, Hector,’ he says, and he’s looking down at what he’s got in his hands.
‘What is it?’ I say.
He gives out a little laugh, smiles and shakes his head again. ‘Oh, it’s a silly bloody hearing aid thing they’ve given me.’ He holds it up so I can see. ‘It’s got this Velcro on it and it’s supposed to stick to the telly, but I’m buggered if I can get it to fasten.’ He goes back onto his knees and starts giving it another go. He’s stuck one piece of Velcro to the edge of the speaker and he’s trying to make the other piece, attached to the aid, cling on. He’s having no luck. The less luck he has, the more he tries to hold it there. And the more it drops off the more he shakes his head and sighs. I love my dad.
‘Here, let’s have a look,’ I say, and I move onto the corner of the settee so I can see what’s going on.
‘It’s so I can hear the television better without having it up too loud for your mum.’
I take it from him and he sits back down. I get on my knees and try to see if I can manage it. After a few attempts I hold both pieces of Velcro up to the light. ‘Dad,’ I say, ‘you’ve got the same two bits here.’
‘What?’ he says.
‘These two pieces of Velcro; they’re the same sort.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, Velcro, Dad. You know Velcro? You know how it works?’
‘I can’t say I do, if I’m honest with you.’
And suddenly I feel strange. I feel sad. Really sad. I don’t know why at first. ‘Well, it’s like hooks and eyes.’
‘Aye?’
‘Or like male and female in electrics.’
‘Is it?’ and he leans in close for a demonstration. I hold up both pieces against the screen so he can see.
‘You’ve got little hooks,’ I say, ‘and you’ve got little eyes. Little loops. Now what you’ve got here is just a lot of little loops.’
‘I see.’
‘You’ve got no hooks.’
‘Well, that’s what they’ve given me.’
‘Well, it won’t work like this.’
‘There’s been a cock-up,’ he
says. He takes the two pieces back and tries to stick them together, giving up almost straight away to show me that he’s understood. ‘Well, that’s no good,’ he says, ‘just giving us loops.’
Then I realize why I feel so sad. My dad, who could build you a car, or rewire a house or plumb up your whole kitchen, doesn’t know how Velcro works.
Through the ceiling I hear footsteps and it must be Eleni getting up. She’s been asleep for nearly three hours, and she had a nap on the train. She didn’t sleep last night, though. Nightmares. Her mother walled into the nave of a church. Just a pair of eyes peeping through a slit in the bricks, apparently. Eleni with a candle. And then it starts to rain. She woke up in a sweat. It was a cold night, but she woke up in a sweat. She got up at one point and I could hear her playing Gershwin on the piano. We only just made the train, she was so wiped out. I love Eleni. I loved the journey. She made me laugh for the first half-hour and then she put her head on my shoulder and slept till Warrington.
‘I think Eleni’s emerging,’ shouts my mother. I can hear lots of hot fat sizzling, taps running, the clatter of plates and pans. I decide to go through to the kitchen.
It’s a nice kitchen. Small, but uncluttered and functional. My mum has got it together in the kitchen. I have only vague memories of ever seeing anything stacked on the draining board. It seemed that everything was always washed up and put away back in its cupboard even before the food was served.
‘That’s lucky,’ says my mum, ‘cos this risotto’s nearly ready.’
‘It smells nice.’
‘I’ve got some parsley. Do you want parsley on it, or shall I not bother?’
‘Don’t bother, Mum.’
We hear the toilet flush and then footsteps on the stairs. The door’s pushed open and Eleni’s rubbing her eyes. Her hair’s all messed up and her dress is creased.
‘Well well,’ says my mother, ‘look who’s here.’ She says it with wry, forgiving affection. She wants some chat and she can chat to Eleni and they make each other laugh. She loves Eleni. She hated Sheba, but she loves Eleni. Even though Eleni’s Greek and struggles with her accent, they can blabber away for whole nights. ‘We don’t see you both enough,’ said my mum on the phone the other night, so we cleared the weekend and jumped on the train.
The Late Hector Kipling Page 2