The Late Hector Kipling

by David Thewlis

  Apparently, the whole exhibition fell apart after the attack on God Bolton. The stink of the dripping manure saw off the first batch. Only the most curious remained. Someone, who shall remain nameless, had commented on how, somehow, the resonance of the room had been enlivened by the passion of assault. Eventually the appearance of the police rendered the whole affair rather unsavoury, leaving only the intimates, the alcoholic, the dedicated and the dedicated alcoholic intimates. I am told that Myers gave my number to the police since I was the only one who had arsed themselves to attempt apprehension of the attacker and, for all Myers knew, might even have succeeded. But I’d been gone for an hour by then and nobody knew the outcome. Some feared that I had caught up with the attacker only to be attacked in return. Others feared that I had caught up with the attacker, attacked him and then suffered a subsequent arrest. Others, namely Matt Collings, wondered if I wasn’t in fact in cahoots with the attacker and the whole thing was just another part of the show. Whilst still others thought it likely that I hadn’t even got close to the attacker and was therefore merely sobbing into my hat, like a big fat baby, on the steps of the canal. Who knew? And would they ever know? Who knows? The whole thing was a nice little mystery for them all.

  Lenny and Kirk had bid goodbye to Rosa at the gallery entrance. They planned to take a cab round to Box Street to see if I was there, but failing that they were off into town to try and salvage the evening. Rosa, since she lived just around the corner, declined the offer of a lift and said she would walk.

  Stilettos on cobbles, that was the first thing I heard. Of course it came as no surprise.

  At first I couldn’t open my eyes. I could feel her hand on my forehead, pushing back my hair. Her cold rings, the sound of her bracelets. When I did open my eyes it felt like they’d been rolled in petrol. The night was sticky with gum. Each blink was the slamming of a door.

  Calling an ambulance didn’t seem to occur to her. Instead she opted for dragging me down the street, me on all fours, all threes in fact since she had hold of one of my hands, smiling down at me, offering me encouragement. What can I say? It worked. This is the street where Rosa lives: La Via Delia Rosa.

  She eased me onto her white settee and covered my bleeding brow with a white flannel. She knelt down on the white boards and whispered, asking me how I felt. I really had no fucking idea about all that kind of thing and so gave her no answer. My eyes were open and I knew that I wasn’t in a coma, but I might have been. I knew that I wasn’t dreaming, but I was hardly awake. I knew that I wasn’t dead, but I was assured that my life was over. Her eyes were close to mine. Someone, somewhere, was learning to play the tom-toms. She took a long look into every corner of me – it lasted for years. Eventually she smiled as though she’d just reached the punchline of a weak joke. Her own eyes were a brilliant crocodile green, spattered with black, like tiny gunshot. It was around then that my ability to foresee the approaching seconds abated. Up till now I had felt as though my body was suspended on broad jets of air, but suddenly the supply was winding down, so slowly, so gently, soft white fingers twisting the taps. I was here. I was here, wherever it was. I was in the white room, bleeding on the white settee. The white flannel, the white taste, the white walls, Rosa’s small white face peering through her sweaty black hair. The white shelf above the white grate was populated by white horses, balls, pebbles and skulls. Rat skulls, rabbit skulls, cat skulls, otters, birds, badgers, bats. Maybe even the skull of a pig. All white and dry and filled with old flies. Fly skulls. The skulls of dust. The telephone was white. The candles, the chairs were white. My Little White Death.

  She brought me through a cup of something she called tea, though it was filled with bits of stick and strange black pods. I burned my lip on the first sip and put it down on the floor.

  ‘What the fuck happened to you?’

  Here she was, close up. Not an atom out of place. She wore a white T-shirt that covered her thighs. Purple toenails. Tattoo of a cartoon bomb on the bulb of her anklebone.

  I told her about the pursuit, the car, the dried-out samosa and how, right up until now, I’d been able to see into the future. She said that that was either a shame or a blessing. I asked her what she meant but she only bowed her head and sipped at her tea. In turn, at my request, she filled me in on the events following my departure from the gallery.

  ‘Horse shit?’

  ‘That’s what most people thought. I mean it was definitely shit but there was some difference of opinion as to the species. And then it started to smoke a little and there was this smell. There may have been some kind of acid in there along with the horse shit, the whole thing was kinda melting.’

  ‘Melting?’

  ‘Kinda, yeah. Smoking and melting.’

  ‘Can it be saved?’

  ‘Well, that guy in the yellow suit who was running the show asked if there was a painter in the house, and your friend Kirk stepped up and suggested warm soapy water and kitchen roll.’

  I sighed.

  Well, there I was on Rosa Flood’s white settee. Sighing and bleeding.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette?’ I said and she went into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a packet of Dunhills. After helping herself she handed me her Zippo and I lit one. I turned the Zippo over in my hand. There was a crude engraving on one side: ‘To Rosa. Smoke yourself to the bone and chain. Charlie C. – An Old Flame’.

  I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one bit.

  ‘I guess this is all kinda strange.’

  ‘Er . . .’ I said, ‘er . . . yeah. You could say that.’

  She took a long drag of her cigarette, almost finishing it in one. ‘So what was all that about, man, that guy flinging that pail of horse shit all over your painting?’

  I’d fallen into a kind of daze, even though the Kodo drummers were rehearsing in my heart.

  ‘I mean, why did he do that?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said, but wished to God that I did, cos the last thing I wanted right then was for the conversation to dry up.

  ‘I mean, do you know him?’

  I told her about having seen him twice before. I told her about the sighting in Tate Modern, but I didn’t mention the toilets or the crying. And I told her about the church but I didn’t mention Eleni, and when she asked me what I was doing in a church I muttered something about Thomas Hardy and Westminster Abbey, giving the impression that I was well read and that the whole thing took place in Westminster Abbey.

  She went on to tell me some story about how Thomas Hardy’s heart was eaten by the family cat. ‘His body was cremated and his ashes entombed in Poets’ Corner, but his heart, so they say, was to be buried in the family plot. But, on the day, it was left out on the kitchen table and the fuckin’ cat ate it. Yeah, man, you should paint that kinda shit. And Walter Raleigh’s widow, she carried his head around in a bag for the rest of her life. You should paint that as well.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about English history.’

  ‘Two things is hardly a lot.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  She was struck by a new thought and clapped her hands together, bouncing on her rump and squealing, like a skittish child. ‘Or Rasputin under the ice, struggling to get his hands free.’

  Well at least she wasn’t suggesting Greek myths.

  ‘Yeah?’ I said.

  ‘Or the bedroom of the Unabomber. Or the aftermath of some random shooting. You should move out of just painting heads. You should be painting what Goya would be painting if Goya was still painting. Did you know that by the time Goya was forty-seven, six of his seven children were dead? You should paint like Goya! Or you could paint some guy who’s thrown himself off a skyscraper, call it King Kong.’

  Was she just coked out of her mind or what? Or was this just her?

  ‘Like what happened to my friend Charlie?’

  ‘What?’ I said, horrified.

  ‘My friend Charlie,’ she said, ‘threw himself off some skyscraper and signed hi
s suicide note “King Kong”.’

  ‘Charlie C?’ I said and raised, or tried to raise, my eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, you read my Zippo. Yeah, Charlie C.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’ I asked, appalled.

  ‘Cos he was crazy. His name was Charlie Conga, and we all used to call him King Conga, and then just Kong, and I guess it all kinda went to his head somehow, and next thing you know he’s taking the elevator up to the top floor, mashed on ketamine, and he smashes a window and bang, splat. Charlie Smoothie, right there on Fifth Avenue. It was only for reasons of taste that they didn’t just haul out the shovels. You see what I’m saying? You should be painting this kinda shit, man.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, and you know what? I really think I will. I liked this girl. Fuck, I really liked this girl.

  ‘I mean after you’ve painted me. If the offer’s still open.’

  ‘It’s still open,’ I said. Rather smoothly, as I remember.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said, and peeled off one of her eyelashes, dropped it on the floor and flicked it across the room.

  ‘So is Charlie C,’ I said, ‘Charlie Conga, the guy you were talking about in all those poems the other night?’

  Rosa stood up and stubbed out her fag in the eye socket of what I took to be the skull of a kitten. ‘Shit no, I never wrote no poem for Charlie,’ and she sat back down, laughing, covering her beautiful white teeth with her beautiful white hand.

  ‘So who were they for?’

  Rosa turned her head and stared at the candles like she had no intention of answering.

  Silence.

  The sound of a tear appearing in the corner of her eye.

  ‘They were for some fuckin’ asswipe.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, not unfamiliar with MTV.

  ‘Some fuckin’ jerk who ran off with some fuckin’ stripper at my twenty-first.’

  ‘You had a stripper at your twenty-first?’

  Rosa scowled at me. ‘No, fucker, she wasn’t working; she was just there. And then they left. I should have killed him. I thought about it. I mean it, I seriously thought about killing him. I counted the ways. I had a gun. I was gonna go with the gun. I was just gonna shoot him in the back.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said, and nodded, casually, like this was the sort of conversation I had every day.

  ‘Yeah, shoot him in the back. Since he’d already stabbed me in mine.’ She lit another cigarette on Kong’s Zippo. ‘That’s when I came over here. I met this English guy in New York. A dancer. He invited me over to London to stay with him. And then we got married.’

  ‘You’re married?’

  She smiled, relishing my dismay. ‘Yeah sure. Only so I could get my papers. He’s gay’ She smiled again at my poorly concealed relief. We gazed at each other for a long time. Two pairs of eyes, charged in the candlelight. Two warm brains, softly electrocuted. Eleni was already betrayed.

  ‘So how about you?’ she said, still looking me in the eye. ‘You seeing anyone?’

  ‘No,’ I said. And then I said it again: ‘No,’ I said. And then: ‘Not at the moment.’

  Indecent silence.

  Understandably concerned that one of us might say something to scotch the moment she took me by the hand and lifted me to my feet. The clink of her bracelets and the smell of musk beneath the wax.

  The bedroom was as black as the living room had been white. The walls, floor and ceiling, all blacker than any black I had ever encountered. A black clock on a black desk. A black chest on a black rug. Black curtains on a black rod. Black books on a black bookshelf. There was a television in one corner, painted black, and on top of the black television a black Madonna cradling a black Christ. Black candles on black china plates. Two black guitars and a black tambourine. She lowered me onto the black bed and rested my head upon the black pillow. She took off my top, eased down Brenda’s jeans and nestled down beside me. Before I had time to implement the fine points of my will, her hands were finding mine and she curled her body around my back like a cat. Like a warm black cat. Like a warm and disastrous cat; The Cat That Ate Thomas Hardy’s Heart. That cat.

  Fade to black.

  It’s dawn now, and I’m stretched out in the bath gazing at my penis. The water is filled with shining white bubbles and my penis is in there somewhere, bobbing on the surface, like butter wouldn’t melt.

  I’ve never been the sort of man to give it a name, nor imagine that it’s something other than me, with eyes and a mouth and a mind of its own. I’ve always steered clear of those cartoons that suggest such a thing, and I call it a penis, not a dick or a cock or a knob or a tool, I call it a penis. My penis and its balls. What a mess. What a fucking mess. All men have had these moments, lying back in the bath, in times of sexual crisis. All men have looked at their penises like this. And perhaps women look at their breasts in this way or sometimes their vaginas if it’s a shallow bath. Comforting to know that practically everyone on the planet has at some time lain back in a bath of some sort, in a time of sexual crisis and damned their genitalia. You could publish a book. Books.

  ‘Fucking parasite,’ I say, ‘fucking leech.’

  I imagine that there’s nothing there. No penis, no balls, no hair. Not that there’s a vagina there. Not that I’m lying back in the bath imagining that I’ve got a vagina. Nor am I lying back in the bath considering castration. No, it’s simpler than that. I mean that there’s just nothing there. The legs meet and there’s just a smooth patch of skin, like the inside of the elbow or the back of the knee. Smooth, hairless, harmless. It doesn’t even have a name. There’s no arsehole and no urethra, because we don’t need to shit or piss. We don’t need to shit or piss because we don’t need to eat or drink. No need to reproduce. We are not born. One day we just appear and continue to keep up appearances forever – we never die. It never rains and there is no disease, decay or even doubt. Since we have fewer organs we are much smaller creatures. But we still have a brain. But a splendid brain. We need to be neither soothed nor hugged nor made to laugh. And everything just looks and sounds as nice as it could ever look or sound. And no one ever lies. And there is no such thing as love.

  I lean back my head on the rolled-up towel, put my hands together and pray that I might spend eternity in this bath. No genitals, no hunger no sickness, no longing, just me and the bubbles and it never gets cold.

  My phone is still switched off and sits on the edge of the bath like a black box of pain. I take it up in my hands and go through the stored numbers – forty in all. Not even enough to take up the phone’s memory. But all of them owed a call. I access the voicemail. ‘Welcome to Orange Answerphone. You have nine new messages . . .’

  One day I’ll learn not to feel this way. One day I’ll have learned to pour milk over this agony. One day the next thing I do won’t be the wrong thing to do.

  The next thing I do: I hold the phone under the water. I have it by its throat. I hold it down by my fat hip and watch it give up its bubbles. It slips from my grasp like soap and clatters against the white enamel. The light goes out.

  Silence.

  I lean back my head and gaze out the window. After weeks and weeks of grey the sky has cleared to blue. I don’t know where I am. All I can see is the backs of houses and a few low roofs. There’s a woman on one of the roofs learning to walk the tightrope. She’s not very good and keeps falling onto a pile of old mattresses. I seem to be facing east. A mellow sun hits the mirrors and in turn the bathwater which ripples and swells across the flaking paint of the ceiling. The water’s getting cold. I bring the phone up into the air and toss it onto the towel. I half expect it to flap.

  There’s a Chinese dressing gown draped across the sink and I try to put it on. After splitting the stitching under the arms and wrestling with the knotted blue belt I take it off and make do with one of the towels. There’s a mirror on the door of the medicine cabinet and when I look into it there’s a face. Not a face I recognize. Not a face I like. Not really a face at all. I need to lie down. I really
need to lie down on this scarlet floor. I stare deep into my own eyes and think of all those tiny things that scrabble about our bodies. I see them as a mob of drunken revellers. I see them as the disenchanted citizens of a Utopian society. I see them as busy and ravenous little shuttles from their mother ship Lucifer. Multiple millions of them, industrious, feeding, excitable and abandoned in every crevice, knob and socket of my body. It makes me feel less alone. I look away from the mirror and up to the ceiling. There’s an ugly little spider navigating the broken bulb.

  Idea For a Piece: Fill polished copper wombs with spiders. A hundred and twenty wombs all over the gallery floor. Twelve thousand spiders in all. Allow them to get about. And if they get up the punters’ trousers, well fuck ’em. They shouldn’t have come to the show in the first place. Call it Fuck You. You Shouldn’t Have Come To The Show In The First Place.

  The creepy little fella starts on his way down. His spittle thread glinting in the sun. I’m put in mind of Robert the Bruce. I’m sat in a chalk cave, in a kilt, with a burning red beard and a planished brooch. But I don’t feel like taking up arms against the English. I don’t even feel like rousing myself from the cave. I’m just anxious that the little twat might land on my towel. But then, in the next moment, sensing my meat turn to vegetable, maybe I do want to take up arms against the English.

  ‘O England, My England . . . You and me. Outside. Now!’

  I bid goodbye to the bathroom and walk into the black bedroom. Rosa’s lying on her front, covers kicked off, naked, still. One hand is tucked beneath her thighs and the other lolls on her head. Between her fingers and in her hair a cigarette has burnt itself out. A two-inch worm of ash curled across her scalp. I blow and some of her hair comes away. She needs looking after. She has a little bald patch. One day she’ll kill herself. I kiss her on the cheek and bless the silence.