The Late Hector Kipling

by David Thewlis

  ‘Kirk called,’ says Lenny, ‘and said you were on your way’ He’s got a pencil in his hand; he puts it in and out of his mouth like it’s a cigar.

  ‘Right,’ I say, glancing at the white settee.

  ‘Says you’ve had a few.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I nod, ‘oh yes,’ and I nod again, and the room turns into some kind of giant tombola drum. ‘Oh yes, I’ve had a few.’

  ‘Hector,’ says Lenny. He stands up. ‘Hector, is something the matter?’

  Brilliant, Lenny. What a fucking genius you are. What a monster of intuition you fucking are. What a master of signals.

  ‘Something the matter?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Hec?’

  I sit up in the chair. I look at the big white settee with a white wooden window frame fitted into the backrest so that you can see straight through. The window has magenta curtains. There’s a space between the front and the back and a medium-sized cactus sitting on a ledge.

  ‘Nice settee,’ I say.

  Lenny looks over at it, like he’s seeing it for the first time. Behind him, on the wall, are several drawings of settees, windows, cactuses.

  ‘Is that it?’ I say.

  ‘Is that what?’ says Lenny.

  ‘The piece,’ I say, ‘the big holy secret.’

  Lenny puts down his pencil and picks up the ruler. ‘Not all of it, no.’

  ‘What’s the cactus about?’

  He’s chewing on the ruler with his sharp white teeth. ‘I’m not gonna use the cactus, I’m taking the cactus out.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I would.’

  Lenny stands up and starts to pace. He picks up my pack of cigarettes and takes one – stealing my cancer. ‘Help yourself,’ I say. He does. ‘Can I sit on it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I sit on your fancy settee?’

  Lenny thinks about it.

  ‘People are gonna want to sit on it,’ I say, ‘unless you’re gonna rope it off. Are you gonna rope it off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then people are gonna want to sit on it.’ And I get up and I sit on it. I lean back – not on the window, just to the left of it. Lenny’s behind me. I lean down and peer at him through the little window. ‘So why have you put a little window into the back of a white settee?’ I say it nicely, inquisitive, interested. Like I really want to know.

  Lenny lights the fag and fidgets like he really doesn’t want to tell me.

  ‘I mean, I’m trying to see it but it’s not exactly jumping out at me.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘Not exactly jumping.’

  Lenny shuffles over to the door and blows out his smoke against the wall. Schubert’s getting irritated.

  ‘Hector, it isn’t finished. I don’t really want to explain it all till it’s finished.’

  ‘Does that mean you can’t?’

  ‘No, it means I won’t. Not till it’s finished.’

  I cross my legs. ‘What’s left to do?’

  ‘Hec!’ snaps Lenny. ‘I don’t come round to your place and tell you how to mix your colours.’

  ‘That’s cos you wouldn’t have a clue.’

  He paces back to his desk and sits down. I sit up. The walls are blue and spinning under dirty water.

  ‘So what’s it called?’ I say.

  ‘It doesn’t have a title yet.’

  ‘What about . . .’ I take off my shoes and stretch out. ‘What about . . . Err . . . what about . . . Sometimes You Need Some Clarity? What about that?’

  Lenny picks up his stupid specs and puts them on. He looks me in the eye, like the specs harbour some ancient and forgotten power. ‘Is that what all this is about?’ he says. ‘I can’t believe all this is about that.’

  ‘What’s “all this”?’ I say.

  ‘This!’ shouts Lenny. ‘You coming round here, clotted with drink, insulting me.’

  ‘How have I insulted you, Lenny?’

  He turns away and gets back to drawing his line. ‘This is really boring.’

  ‘Lenny, how have I insulted you?’

  ‘Let it go.’

  ‘Was it just now when I said you couldn’t mix paint?’

  He turns back and brandishes his pencil. ‘Your whole attitude is insulting, Hector. You don’t turn up on somebody’s doorstep, twenty miles out of your skull, and then start laying into them.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Fuck off, Hector.’ He stands up again and paces to the other side of the room. Once again I’m compelled to look at him through the little window in the back of his magnificent white settee.

  ‘OK, so I did a water ad, big fucking deal. I did a water campaign.’

  ‘Campaign?’ I say and rub my cuff across the pane as though I’ve misheard him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, campaign, and yeah I’m sure that you think I’ve made a fat scarlet arse of myself, and that’s fine, that’s fine, Hec, but really . . . really it’s none of your fucking business, is it?’

  I push myself up and sit forward, each hand on its respective knee. One of his candles flickers out. ‘What did you say when Tracey Emin did the Bombay Sapphire ad?’

  ‘I don’t know, Hector,’ says Lenny, ‘it was a long time ago. Remind me. What did I say?’

  I crane my neck to face him. ‘You said, “Silly fucking tart,” you said, “Silly mental tart, what a sell out,” that’s what you said.’

  ‘All right, all right, Hector, so I’m a silly fucking tart and I’ve sold out. I’m helping a bunch of people sell bottles of water, but like I say it’s none of your business. Why does it bother you so much?’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me at all.’

  He paces back to the window. Schubert’s coming to his senses. Lenny turns it off.

  Silence.

  ‘I needed the money,’ he says, arms in the air. ‘I needed the fucking cash, y’know? I mean . . . y’know, it’s not easy. It’s hard to sell a hole in a gallery floor, it’s hard to sell burst balloons and a seven-foot sausage. I’m not a painter. People don’t really buy ideas.’

  ‘They’ll buy this, though, won’t they?’ I say, patting the dazzling white cushion.

  ‘Hopefully,’ says Lenny, ‘hopefully, yeah.’

  ‘And they bought Domesticated Goose Chase, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘And how much did that go for?’

  ‘You know how much it went for.’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty thousand.’

  ‘That’s right, a hundred and fifty thousand.’

  ‘Hector, we’re not going over all that again.’

  ‘Who says?’

  Lenny puts out his cigarette in a pink ashtray. ‘All right. All fucking right, Hector, let’s go over it all again. Let’s exhume that old stiff. Let’s get out our tweezers and pick away at what’s left of the meat. So what’s your point?’

  I curl up in a ball. ‘Calm down, Lenny.’

  ‘I’ve been telling you for years to do a self-portrait, and then you do one. Do I accuse you of nicking my idea? No.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘It’s exactly the same. If you thought that a coffin chasing a pram around a gallery was such a great idea then why didn’t you do it?’

  ‘Cos . . .’ I say, ‘cos it’s not such a great idea.’

  ‘Then what’s your fucking point?’ bawls Lenny, towering over me, huge and bald, fists clenched, towering over me with his sharp white teeth.

  I start to cry. I’m curled up in a ball and starting to cry. ‘Don’t, Lenny, don’t. Give me a fucking break.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Hector? You’re fucking mad.’

  ‘Lenny, Lenny, stop, just stop.’

  He bends down, close to my face. Too close to my face. His breath smells of mint and smoke. ‘You’re losing it, Hector. Whatever “it” means to you.’

  ‘My dad’s dying.’

  Silence.

  ‘What?’ Lenny straightens
up.

  ‘My dad’s dying.’ I unfurl from my ball. ‘By now he might even be dead.’

  ‘Hector, what are you talking about?’

  ‘My dad! I’m talking about my dad, you heartless fucker. My dad’s on his fucking deathbed and you’re just screaming at me.’

  Lenny sits down beside me. He lifts me up and cradles me in his arms. He rocks me and clears the hair from my eyes.

  Silence.

  I wish he hadn’t turned the Schubert off.

  Through the wall I can hear Cilia Black saying, ‘Well, well, well, chuck.’ She goes on to say something else but Lenny has his hand over my ear and I can’t tell what it is.

  I can’t tell you what happened next, cos what happened next is I lost consciousness. So there you go – I was wrong – I can tell you, I just told you – I lost consciousness – that’s what happened next.

  In the morning I woke up in a pool of blood. Lenny had scribbled a note saying, ‘Good luck tonight Hec. See you there. Sorry about your dad. I love you. Lenny’ There was blood in my hair and all down the side of my neck. There was blood on my woollen arms and blood all over the cushions. Blood and beer and whiskey and toast. All over me, and Lenny’s settee. It must be the season of bloody settees.

  Except, of course, it wasn’t blood. It took me a few minutes to realize. It was fucking beetroot. I’d thrown up beer and beetroot and whiskey and toast, all over Lenny’s piece. He must have woken up, written his note, and left before it happened, cos I’m sure he would have mentioned it. I’m sure he wouldn’t have left me lying there to choke on my own vomit.

  I went downstairs and fetched a bucket of suds and a sponge. I managed to break down the lumps and the general viscosity of it but there was no hope of sponging out the general bright redness of it. In fact the harder I sponged the redder it got. Lenny’s white windowed settee with a vomit stain in the shape of . . . in the shape of – I don’t know, is it me, or is that vomit stain in the shape of Africa?

  I’m back at home. I called Eleni from Lenny’s but the old fella in the hardware store said she wasn’t around. I think he was saying that Eleni and Yiorgos were staying at the hospital in Matala, although he might have been saying that he hoped Italians liked Mahler, I don’t know, it was a bad connection.

  I searched Lenny’s house for any signs of Rosa but all I found were Brenda’s things. I tried on one of her sweaters and a pair of her jeans. The sweater looked a bit effeminate but the jeans were quite snug. I looked around for a clock but they didn’t seem to own one. I walked home along the canal and by the time I arrived back at Box Street it was five o’clock.

  Now it’s six o’clock and the show opens at eight. I’ve had a bath and changed my clothes and I’m stood in front of the mirror trying to get my hair to look like it wasn’t cut by a blind three-year-old. Perhaps I could make it to a barber before the show. I’m wearing a black suit with a lemon shirt. Black shoes, grey socks. Perhaps I should put Brenda’s jeans back on.

  In fact that’s what I’ll do.

  So now I’ve got on Brenda’s jeans and a black polo neck with a green hoop around the chest. I’ll wear my horrible Crombie and maybe even my homburg hat. It’s a few years since I’ve worn my homburg.

  My guts are full of lava. I feel like I’ve swallowed twenty fried eggs and a hot bicycle chain. I can’t face eating but I know that I should so I open a tin of tomato soup and soak it up with two pieces of pitta bread and a bowl of puckered olives. I think of Eleni and consider giving her another try. By the time I finish the soup I’ve decided against it. I decide to call Mum instead.

  It rings for a long, long time. I nearly give up. In the end Dad answers.

  ‘Dad!’ I yell. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, not too grand, Hector lad, not too grand.’ He doesn’t sound too grand. He sounds frail.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m all giddy and dizzy and . . . I don’t know, I’m not right, Hector.’

  ‘Well, what’s going on, Dad? How’s Mum?’

  ‘Your mother’s gone out for a walk. She’s gone out in her wellies but it’s not raining, and she’s put on her sunglasses but it’s not sunny either. I’m worried sick about her.’

  I pick up a cigarette and smoke it cold. ‘Well, maybe she’s just prepared.’

  ‘Prepared for what?’ says Dad. ‘Yesterday she went out, saying she was going to get her hair done, and then she comes back with a photo of herself riding on the Big One.’

  ‘On the rollercoaster?’

  ‘Aye, the Big One.’

  ‘What the hell’s she doing on the Big One?’

  ‘She’s got this photo of herself printed the side of a tea mug, mouth wide open, screaming, hair all over the shop. She looked like Ken Dodd.’

  This is not good news. Mum’s seventy-two and bad with her nerves. She won’t let Dad drive faster than thirty, even on the motorway. What the fuck’s she doing riding the Big One?

  ‘Dad, listen, what the hell’s going on with this settee?’

  ‘Don’t keep saying hell, Hector.’

  ‘Well, what’s going on?’

  ‘Bugger all’s going on with the settee. I’ve put it out in the garage. I’ve got the car parked out in the street all spattered wi’ bird doings.’

  I walk over to the loading doors. ‘Well, what are you gonna do about it?’

  ‘I’ve taken a hose to it.’

  ‘I mean the settee.’

  ‘Well, maybe I should take a hose to that. We’ve put it back in the paper, original price, but no bugger’s phoned.’

  There’s a man by the canal carrying a bucket.

  ‘Dad, let me buy it.’

  ‘Why would you buy it?’

  ‘Because I need a settee.’

  ‘Nay, Hector, you’ve got a settee. You’ve got that nice blue settee.’

  ‘Just let me buy it, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t be soft, Derek . . .’

  ‘Hector.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘My name’s Hector, Dad. You’re Derek.’

  A small silence.

  ‘Aye, well don’t be soft, Hector, I’m not having you wasting your money as well.’

  The man with the bucket takes off his shoes and socks and dangles his feet in the water.

  ‘But I wouldn’t be wasting it, Dad. Lenny needs a settee.’

  ‘I thought you said you did.’

  ‘Well, I meant for Lenny. Lenny needs a settee.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t need this one. No one in their right mind would want an atrocity like this.’

  Tall, lopsided, foppish-looking fella with a bucket, dangling his feet in the canal.

  ‘But it’s for an art piece, Dad.’

  ‘Herpes?’

  ‘An art piece,’ I shout, ‘Lenny needs to make it into a piece of art.’

  ‘He’ll have a bloody job.’

  ‘He’s doing a sculpture.’

  ‘Hector,’ says Dad, like he’s talking to a simpleton, ‘it’s a settee.’

  ‘I know, Dad.’

  Silence. I hear Dad sigh and sit down.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Hector, it sets my heart off pounding. I’ve had to sit down.’

  I can hear him breathing and then I’m sure I hear his eyes close.

  The other phone rings.

  ‘Hector, are you on that mobile?’ says Dad.

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘You’re at home and you’re phoning me on your mobile?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I can hear him shaking his head. ‘You think money grows on trees?

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘You think money grows on trees?’ he says again like a kind of Lancastrian Robert De Niro.

  ‘Well, it sort of does, Dad.’

  Dad gasps. ‘I’m putting the phone down,’ he says, ‘it’s costing me is this. Go and answer your other phone. Bye.’

  ‘Dad, it’s my show tonight.’

  But he’s gone.
/>
  It’s Myers on the phone worried about where I am and how God Bolton looks magnificent in the alcove, but how the wine hasn’t turned up and the heating’s packed in.

  That tall fella with the bucket’s still there. He’s scooping up wads of slime from the canal and putting them into the bucket which is already full of something, I can’t tell what. He stands up and goes on his way. Tall lopsided foppish-looking fella. The bloke from the toilets in the Tate. The bloke from the church. He gets around.

  I open the fridge and stare at the beers; all lined up like little bombs. The soup’s made me feel worse and all I can think of is that a beer might make it better. I wish Eleni were here. I wish Eleni were here to make it better. Whatever ‘it’ is. Perhaps I should just listen to Bianca. Perhaps I should just try to burp myself.

  8

  THE DOODLEBUG GALLERY, BETHNAL GREEN, LONDON

  Myers was right: God Bolton does look magnificent in the alcove. In fact it all looks magnificent. I got here just before eight and rearranged all the lights and now it all looks as spectacular as I ever imagined. I’m good. Fucking hell I’m good. I’ve got it. I’ve got it in abundance. I might even be a genius. (I didn’t touch the beers but I did smoke half a joint; but even so, it all looks incredible – I think.) Twelve paintings, each one eleven foot by eight. Each one a madly colourful and hysterical big head. Twenty-four enormous eyes staring down and out and across the old canoe factory. Fifteen spotlights, a plinth of Tibetan butter candles and the complementary amber glow of the sodium street lamp. It’s been open half an hour and there must be about thirty people here. I say here – I mean in the gallery. I’m not actually in the main gallery. I’m in another room. A much smaller room, a tiny room. A cupboard. I’m standing in a small cupboard peeping through a crack in the door.

  Most of them I don’t know. I can see Myers stood in the middle of it all, beaming, sweating, filling up everyone’s glasses. I can see Kirk at the far end frozen in front of God Bolton; rubbing at his head with a fag between his fingers, frozen. Jenny Saville’s all in black and she’s got her face right up to Mum squinting. Gillian Wearing’s talking to Georgina Starr about Dad and Matthew Collings is polishing his specs by the door. Lenny’s not here yet and Kirk looks a bit at sea. I should come out of this cupboard. I should find a way of walking out of this cupboard that won’t look like Hector Kipling just walked out of a cupboard at his own show. Myers keeps glancing over and frowning. He’s come out in an egg-yellow suit and a pair of sandals. He looks an arse.