The Late Hector Kipling

by David Thewlis

  ‘Put your fingers there,’ she says, ‘put your left hand here, and your right hand here. Now press them all down together at the same time,’ and she takes my fingers in hers and settles each on its respective key. She squeezes my wrist and gives me the rhythm. ‘That’s called E flat diminished,’ she says, ‘and your left hand is playing two E flats an octave apart. Now just look at the screen and keep pressing them down. I’ll do the pedals.’

  I do as I’m told. There’s a woman on the TV making a cup of tea. She pulls out the teabag, spoons in the sugar, pours in the milk and then, for no apparent reason, hurls the whole lot across the room. It cuts to a shot of the tea snaking across the linoleum, disappearing beneath the fridge. Eleni rearranges my fingers and sets me off again. Brittle diminisheds repeat over and over as the woman pulls onto her head a yellow polythene bag with ‘C’est Ça!’ written on it. Then F diminished over and over again, and then I’m moved to a C ninth and we can see the shape of the woman’s face through the polythene. ‘And now F,’ says Eleni, shifting me out of the way and doing it herself.

  ‘What’s this film about?’ I say.

  ‘It’s about a man and a woman,’ says Eleni, playing off key now and again, a bit like Les Dawson, but a lot more chilling than Les. ‘One night at the start of the film they run over a cat and kill it. The man has been drinking and his response to the death of the cat is so . . . musketeer . . .’

  ‘Musketeer?’

  ‘What is that word you told me that means carefree, like a soldier?’

  ‘Cavalier,’ I say. I love Eleni.

  ‘Yes, the man is so cavalier that the woman punches him in the face with the cat. They separate after that night and the rest of the film is about how they both cope with the separation. He drinks more than ever and sleeps on prostitutes and she is trying to learn French from a tape because she has become totally obsessed with a waiter who can only say, “Here is your bill. Service is not included.” She also tries to kill herself a lot – as we see,’ says Eleni, as the woman cuts into the bag with a pair of scissors. ‘It’s called Dead Space. It’s a comedy.’

  Later that day it’s time for Eleni to indulge me a little by helping me to manoeuvre my life’s work from the flat down into the street. I’m struggling with the winch. I’m stripped to the waist, sweat pouring off my chest, lowering a painting down into the street. Eleni’s standing by the truck with her arms aloft, waiting to receive my painting of a big green face dangling in mid-air, big as a cathedral door, swaddled in bubble wrap, the big ugly face peeping through. Big ugly eyes staring out towards the canal, swaying in the breeze. It must seem quite a spectacle to that old dear who’s stopped in her tracks to take it all in. Shopping by her side. Little dog sniffing at a lolly wrapper. Perhaps she’s noticed that it’s me hanging out there. Perhaps she’s registered the big green ugly face and then looked up at me, and seen that it’s my face. And I don’t know why but it makes me feel very proud in a way, even if it’s proud only in front of this crooked little pensioner down in the street. It’s a quiet street and hardly anyone ever comes along. She’s just stood there, looking up. In awe. I think I can say in awe. Either that or she’s simple and she doesn’t know where she is.

  ‘Two more feet,’ yells Eleni, ‘two more feet and I got it.’

  I’ve agreed with Myers, who runs the Doodlebug Gallery in Bethnal Green, that I’ll take care of the transport and we’ve hired a little truck. I’m not even sure that it’s going to fit, but Eleni says that even if it hangs over the edges, as long as it’s covered and well secured then everything will be good. That’s how she says it: ‘Everything will be good,’ her thick Cretan accent making it all sound easy as pie.

  I begin to shake with the effort and the winch groans. Looking down I can see that Eleni has just about got her fingertips to the edge of the frame. She’s shifting her new blue shoes across the pavement as she prepares to find her balance. The old woman’s still stalled in her tracks, dog still sniffing the lolly wrapper, nose right in there, lapping up the raspberry.

  ‘Here it comes,’ I shout.

  ‘Here I am,’ she replies and steadies it at both corners, though she’s too tiny to span the full width. It’s the largest piece I’ve ever produced and fuck knows why I’ve said to Myers that I’ll transport it myself. He should have offered some help if you ask me, but he didn’t and I’m beginning to think that he’s a bit of a chancer.

  The old woman snags the leash on her dog and moves off. ‘Come on, Reggie,’ she says, and hobbles past Eleni, ducking her head, and Eleni smiles at her and says that we’re sorry. And I think how I’m not, but I know that Eleni is, and how she means it, and how I love her, and how I thank the stars for the day Godfrey Bolton rigged up that bridle from the rafters. ‘I’ve got it,’ she yells, ‘it’s with me now.’ I give the winch a few more turns until she’s eased it over towards the window of the old print works opposite and settled it against their wall.

  There’s a red Volkswagen Beetle coming up the road. It’s got black spots painted all over it to look like a ladybird. Just as Eleni’s cleaning off her hands and looking up to see if I’m coming down, a motorbike tears round the corner, leaning over on its side, the way Dad used to show me when he brought out his old photos of him at the TT Races. The ladybird swerves but it’s no use: the motorbike panics and goes right through the middle of my face. Eleni falls back against the truck, and as quick as he’s down the rider’s back on his feet, skipping up and down to show he’s all right. ‘God, that was weird,’ I can hear him say, ‘that was fucking weird.’ He takes off his helmet and he looks at his bike, smoking, still purring, right there, in the middle of my fat oily bubble-wrapped mouth. The canvas is in shreds.

  I look down and think about jumping, but I don’t. How could I think about jumping when I have a girl like Eleni? She’s trying to grab hold of the biker to calm him down. He’s in a right state. ‘God, that was weird,’ he keeps saying, over and over again. And then he collapses and I rush to the phone and call for an ambulance.

  When I was with Sheba we lived in a small brown flat overlooking Leicester Square. I remember one night lying there on the floor, stoned on skunk, drunk on Tennessee sour mash. Sheba was out somewhere. I didn’t know where. Probably fucking some fucking teenager. Down in the Square there were three buskers. One bloke was singing ‘King of the Swingers’ through a little practice amp, turned right up. Another bloke, in a long drape of burgundy velvet and a maroon dickie bow, was spouting something from Turandot. And in the middle of them both was a Bolivian guitar combo, going at it like they’ve just slaughtered a gram in the toilets of the Equinox. On top of all this you’ve got the hysteric jangle of the fair and a premiere of the new Bond film at the Empire and the theme music blasting out of twenty-foot speakers. Five fire engines screaming around Piccadilly. Next thing you know the little pastoral gimmick outside the Swiss Centre kicked in with its silly black bells, chiming out ‘Molly Malone’, though what that’s got to do with Switzerland fuck knows. Anyway, I was lying there on the floor, listening to all this, and I thought, ‘Fuck it. My life’s out of control.’ And it was. It definitely was. So the next morning, since Sheba still hadn’t shown up, I packed a few things together and set off walking across the Square. I didn’t get very far. I booked into the Hampshire between Garfunkel’s and the Odeon. I took a two hundred and forty-nine pound a night room and stayed there for two weeks. When I finally got it together to phone Sheba to tell her it was over she was already gone. She’d moved in with some diabetic skateboarder who didn’t mind her sleeping disorder, her compulsive masturbatory spasms and her filthy fucking bras flung all over the floor of his Clapham squat. Fine.

  Here’s a funny thing: Shakespeare stands in the middle of Leicester Square, flanked by four ugly fish spouting dirty water. He’s resting his chin on his fist and gawping at a little statue of Charlie Chaplin. One night I was staggering through the Square, and someone had pushed a custard pie into Chaplin’s bronze gob. There ar
e some real artists out there. Real ones. Just pissing their lives away.

  Eleni has my head in her lap and she’s calling me things like ‘baby’ and ‘angel’ and kissing my hands and stroking the hair out of my eyes, which are crimson, I’m sure, and sore and glassy with tears. It took me three months to paint that ugly green face, God knows how many hours staring into the mirror looking like that shot in The Shining where Jack Nicholson’s finally lost it – the one that goes on for about a minute and nothing’s moving, not one hair, and you’re thinking, ‘Fuck, he’s finally lost it.’

  Eleni’s kissing my hands, stroking the hair out of my eyes and calling me things like ‘baby’ and ‘angel’.

  For the second time in a week I’m in tears over a painting.

  I saw Bianca earlier. I’ve seen Bianca every Monday for the past three months, since July. Ever since Lenny was shortlisted. Ever since Lenny accepted his shortlisting. Ever since they shortlisted Lenny and Lenny couldn’t rouse himself to decline, that’s how long I’ve been seeing Bianca. Not that there’s a connection. Oh no, there’s no connection. So what if I started seeing Bianca the day after he broke the news? So what if Bianca knows his middle name and the name of his mother’s dog? There’s no connection. So what if Bianca’s scabby parrot squawks ‘Lenny!’ every time he sees me?

  Anyway, like I say, I saw her earlier. She asked me if I wanted a herbal tea or a proper tea, and I said, ‘All proper tea is theft,’ and we got into a conversation about Communism, wit, Freud and beards. She told me that pogonophobia is a fear of beards and I told her about how Cuban intelligence once foiled a CIA plot to devise a powder to be smuggled into Castro’s boots that would make his beard fall off. She smiled. It was the first time I’d seen her smile. She’s quite pretty when she smiles.

  THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, SOHO, LONDON

  ‘So then she scrambles off into the bathroom and comes out with a broken bottle.’

  ‘Shampoo bottle?’ says Kirk.

  ‘No!’ says Lenny. ‘A glass bottle,’ and lifts his hand up into a claw, which me and Kirk take to represent glass. ‘A broken fucking glass bottle,’ says Lenny, ‘and she’s brandishing it in my face.’

  I’m sitting in the Pillars of Hercules with Lenny Snook and Kirk Church.

  ‘And she’s screaming and screaming, “Kill me, Kill me,” over and over.’

  ‘With the bottle?’ says Kirk.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Did she mean with the bottle?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Kill her with the bottle?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Lenny, ‘I suppose so. It’s not the point.’

  ‘So,’ I say, ‘she’s coming at you with this bottle . . . Carry on.’

  ‘So I get down on my knees and I put my hands together.’

  Like you’re praying?’ says Kirk.

  ‘Yeah, like I’m on my knees praying. Like I’m trying, like I’m really fucking, you know, trying to neuter the situation. I mean . . . fucking hell.’

  ‘And?’ I say.

  ‘She says we should go to relationship counselling.’

  ‘Brenda says that?’

  ‘That’s what she says, bottle in hand, me on my knees, making out that I’m praying.’

  ‘So are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Will I fuck. I want out of it. It’s over.’ He runs his hand across his scalp. ‘There’s nothing to say. You can’t make shit not shit by talking about it. I don’t want fucking relationship counselling. I don’t want this relationship to be fucking counselled. I want it to be cancelled!’ he shouts, ‘I want relationship cancelling!’ And he bangs his fist down on the table and the table wobbles and looks scared like it’s all the table’s fault.

  Kirk’s saying nothing. Kirk’s quite a quiet fella and he’s seriously uncomfortable with things like passion and fists and shouting in pubs when everyone can hear. Lenny’s not like that. Lenny and Kirk are very different. Kirk’s got a thing about the right way of making tea. Lenny’s all fist.

  ‘I want this giant blue glove to drop from the sky and stamp it all out.’

  ‘Like in Yellow Submarine,’ says Kirk.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Like in Yellow Submarine, when the Blue Glove wipes out Pepper-land.’

  ‘Does it?’ says Lenny.step

  ‘Yeah,’ says Kirk, ‘it does. Big Blue Glove.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘It’s in your psyche somewhere, is that,’ and then, ‘obviously.’

  Lenny looks a bit put out by this information. ‘Anyway, what I’m saying is . . . what was I saying?’

  ‘You were saying how you want an end to it,’ I say, ‘and then you stole an image from Yellow Submarine.’

  ‘What do you mean I stole it?’

  ‘All right, you appropriated it.’

  ‘What’s with all this stealing shit?’ He’s gone a bit sweaty.

  ‘What stealing shit?’ I say.

  ‘All these snide jibes about stealing you’ve been coming out with recently.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The night I came back from New York, just now.’

  ‘I’m nipping to the toilet,’ says Kirk, and does.

  I light up a cigarette. Lenny lights up a cigarette. Copying me.

  ‘So?’ says Lenny.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So, Hec, I’ve known you since you were seventeen and summat’s going on.’

  ‘Lenny,’ I say, ‘I’ve known you since you were seventeen and you’re getting paranoid.’ He takes it no further, and we both sit there staring at the ashtray.

  Here’s how we met: 10 December 1980, the day after news reached Blackpool that Lennon had been shot. I’m having a fag on the beach, humming ‘Mother’, looking out to sea, cos that’s what artists do when they need to think. The sun is sinking and the tide’s on its way out for the night. I gaze at the waves giving up the fight, filthy brown waves, like old tea and dosser’s flob. I gaze at the horizon and think about New York. I think about Liverpool and how bullets must feel. I think about Spaniards and spanners and Edgar Allan Poe getting a kicking. And then I get back to the waves, the icy waves, and I see something white and square floating on the surface. And then no. Not floating. Appearing. The tide has gone and there’s something white on the beach. An old washing machine. I wait for a long time and then I walk over to it. The beach is deserted. It’s starting to rain and I open the door. Inside the washing machine is an apple. I examine the apple, look around, and take a bite.

  The next day a photograph of me, standing by the washing machine, biting the apple, is delivered to my parents’ house. There’s a phone number, written in white, on a black plastic joke-shop moustache. That’s how I met Lenny.

  Kirk staggers back from the toilet and does a little drum riff on the table. ‘So,’ he says, ‘it’s over?’

  ‘What?’ says Lenny.

  ‘You and Brenda. Sounds like you’re saying it’s over.’ He looks a bit strange, like he might have been crying. ‘You were saying you want an end to it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Lenny, ‘I want an end to it. I want the tide to rush in and out, and the beach all smooth, and all these disappointing moats and castles washed out of existence.’ Interesting. He continues, ‘I want my heart running down the street in funny red slippers, squirting water from a plastic flower on its lapel’ I try to imagine such a thing. ‘I want a heart with a lapel’ He’s clawing at his stool. ‘Is that wrong? Is it wrong to want that?’

  I sneak a quick look around the bar. Everyone else seems to be having normal conversations.

  A minute goes by. Lenny’s staring at the clock like it’s gonna draw a gun on him. And then: ‘It’s an easy thing to bring horror into a room,’ he says. ‘I could cut my throat open with this glass right now.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ says Kirk.

  ‘But you’d have a task to get happiness in as fast.’

  ‘What if that girl over there,’ say
s Kirk, waving his pint at some little piece of jailbait in the corner, ‘walked up to you and said she’s in love with you and needs to take you down into the bog for a blow job?’ Kirk got here early and he’s a couple of pints up on us.

  ‘Like I say,’ says Lenny, ‘it’s an easy thing to bring horror into a room.’

  ‘Her coming up to you and telling you she’s in love is one thing,’ I say, sucking on my fag, being careful not to offend Kirk, ‘and asking you down to the bog for a blow job’s another.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Lenny. And the three of us sit there wondering what I mean by that, and what Lenny means by saying ‘exactly’, and what Kirk means by saying nothing but nodding and taking another swig of his pint. Men can be a bit sad sometimes. Especially when they’re hunched up around a pub table saying things behind their girlfriends’ backs. I say girlfriends cos none of us are married. We’re all in our forties and unmarried.

  Lenny’s with Brenda Barker, who’s a potter. He’s been with Potty Brenda for six years and she frightens him. Two things in particular frighten him. The first is her proclivity for hurling knives. The second is the accuracy of her aim. There’s a small wound on his shoulder right now. He’s hiding it, but I can see it every time the collar of his shirt comes down.