‘I don’t believe you,’ said Hugo. ‘Not round here, please. Maybe over in Redfern.’ I didn’t know where Redfern was. ‘So, is this a tourist rip-off thing or something? I mean, Nick’s right, they’re from Bali or Hong Kong, yeah?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said, finishing my wine and wondering what my long story was going to be.
‘Sit down, sit down.’ Nick slapped a seat next to him and Robin. ‘Tell us all about it, wee travelling lassie.’
‘That’s a really good Scottish accent by the way,’ I said, toasting him with my empty glass and winking at Robin.
‘More wine?’ asked Dick Two.
‘Why not? It’s Sunday.’ I smiled at the gathering. Then I continued, directing most of my spiel at Robin and at Max’s parents, who seemed to be the dullest of the bunch. ‘No, seriously. I graduated from Edinburgh College of Art last year.’ I felt much more confident out of my cagoule.
Robin said, ‘Oh OK. In?’
I could see she was genuinely interested and not doubting my credentials in the slightest. ‘Oh, fine art, painting mostly.’ I worried that it was wrong to say ‘painting mostly’ and that ‘fine art’ should have covered it.
‘Right, right. I also did fine art, but I graduated four years ago now.’
‘Sydney?’ I presumed they had an art school in Sydney.
‘Mmm.’ She nodded and smiled. I tried to ignore Nick unravelling a small piece of folded paper, which I knew would be coke. He fumbled around, spilling a little, mopping it up with his finger and sucking it.
‘Nick! Come on, eh?’ Hugo gestured to me. I looked up, pretending just to notice.
‘No, it’s fine, really, it’s totally all right, go ahead.’ I turned back to Robin, my only real hope.
‘So you were saying, you graduated,’ she prompted.
‘Yes, I graduated but my trouble was—’
‘Kerry?’ Nick offered me the first line. There were six chopped out on a table mat with pictures of different kinds of fish. This surprised me, given that Max had to be picked up from his grandparents.
I sniffed it up my right nostril, for only the third time in my life. Robin went next.
‘You were saying?’ she asked when she’d finished and passed the mat on.
‘Yes. You see, my father was actually a famous artist.’ I offered Robin and the others a Benson & Hedges. They all declined in favour of Marlboro and Silk Cut.
I scanned the area for ideas of my father’s name. I thought about the child called Max, waiting on his mum and dad. Then I thought about Mad Max and how it starred Mel Gibson who was Australian, then I put Mad and the ax from Max together and I formed Maddox which sounded like an artist. In fact, there was an artist called Conroy Maddox who was part of a surrealist group of British painters. I remembered him from sixth-year art studies, the one subject that kept me at school for my final year. The discovery of the name excited me and caused my heart to pound as my brain raced for another name which was to be his second, which had to go well with the first but it had be quick; I mustn’t take too long, otherwise I would give myself away.
On the table was a lighter with a Harley-Davidson on it, and so my father was named.
‘Maddox Davidson. He was part of a group of Scottish painters from the sixties. No?’
‘No, doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘Well, he was very well thought of. Not by me, though.’ I added some criticism of my father for authenticity.
‘So it’s in the blood, then?’ asked Nick, grinding his teeth.
‘Must be. Unfortunately it’s not the only thing, though.’ I tilted my wine glass to the side. Some of them nodded like the suckers they were becoming. ‘Yep, unfortunately my father died a penniless drunk.’
‘Oh no, that’s so sad,’ said the thinner of the two thin girls, the one with the lipstick and the sunglasses.
‘Yep, everything we had, all the fortune he’d acquired, the lot, all gone. He was just mad, destructive. He got called Mad Maddox, that’s how Edinburgh knew him.’ I was really pushing it now, surely.
‘So when was that, then?’ asked Robin sincerely, pulling her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms round her legs.
‘In my final year at art school. He didn’t even make my graduation show.’ I quickly scanned the group to see if anyone was going to pick me up on ‘show’. I didn’t know if one had an art show or not.
‘So you decided to get away and start afresh. I can understand that.’ Hugo spoke slowly, trying tentatively to guess my life story.
I nodded to encourage him. ‘I was tired of living in my father’s shadow. He was a very powerful character and extremely well thought of on the British art scene. I mean, he was a terrible father, but a great painter.’
‘Maddox Henderson,’ muttered Robin.
‘Maddox Davidson,’ I corrected her. Nick laid out another batch of lines.
‘What sort of stuff did he paint?’
I should have prepared myself for Robin’s question but I was concentrating on Nick chopping out another six lines. It felt like seconds ago since he was chopping out the last lot. How long would this go on for? How was I going to tie in my father’s death with me being here trying to flog a group of well-educated people some tacky piece-of-shit paintings for a couple of hundred dollars? One thing at a time. Right now, I had to explain what sort of stuff he painted.
On the table were the remains of some cantaloupe, which made me think of antelope.
‘One of his most famous pieces of work centred round his trip to Kenya, in the late fifties, where he photographed antelope, which he later worked with on his return to the UK. The antelope period was fairly abstract. I mean, he was an abstract painter, drifted into it after the Kenya trip.’ I lit up another cigarette for something to do and to cover up the panic at the end of each new bullshit sentence.
‘Really?’ asked Robin, while the others listened attentively to my increasingly odd story.
‘He was really a surrealist at heart.’ Absolute silence prevailed. ‘But became abstract for a while.’ Oh my God, I thought. Is it fucking possible to be surrealist and then a bit abstract for a while? Did I say a bit abstract? Or just abstract? Because a bit is very poor.
‘Right.’ Robin kept nodding. ‘Sounds a bit confusing.’
Acknowledge confusing, I thought. Don’t deny confusing, you’ll only look as though you’re being defensive and that will convey dishonesty.
‘Extremely confusing, that was him, and that was life with him.’ I felt clever for building on confusing and making something of it rather than letting it bring me down.
‘Pretty amazing story.’ Dick Two was still with me.
I took another line, this time up the left nostril. I didn’t want to use too much of the right, I wanted to balance it with the left. Also, I had turned left out of the phone booth and that had brought me here, which was where I was meant to be for some reason, so left is good, I thought, hoovering up.
‘Not being funny or anything, but your dad is this great painter in Scotland, yeah?’ Fucking Nick was on to something.
‘Yeah.’ Now I’d joined the nodders.
‘Well, how come you’re painting this shit?’
I took the longest drag of my cigarette I could possibly manage in order to stall. ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ stuck on ‘looks straight ahead, not at me’, which I took as a sign, which reminded me that Robin had an exhibition at the Signs Gallery in Paddington. Which made me think about Paddington Bear, my childhood favourite, which made me think of Paddington’s favourite food, which was marmalade sandwiches, which reminded me of my poor old granddad who lived on marmalade sandwiches before he moved to the home, which made me feel sad, which I feared I would be unable to smoke off as it was exacerbated by the Santana CD that Nick had just put on. I felt myself slipping into a rare melancholy and I wanted to hold Robin’s hand. Instead, I attempted to answer the question.
‘Well, I wanted to get far away from Scotland and where
I was from and all the reminders of my family name. I have a brother out here, so I decided to follow him and start a life here.’ That explained the personal journey. ‘In terms of my work, I want nothing more than to exhibit here in Sydney, but I’m a long way off that right now because this is just the start for me.’ Nodding all round. ‘Incidentally, my brother is a sculptor.’
‘Cool,’ said Robin.
My pathological dislike of people who said ‘cool’ brought me momentarily out of my depressive slump.
‘My brother and I and a couple of his mates, who’re painters as well, want to hire a big studio down by the docks to work in, but it’s so pricey and I’ve got to pay rent where I’m living, so I decided to do some basic stuff to earn me some cash while I work on my real art.’
Fucking brilliant, I thought. But my made-up story, I noticed, was as sad and difficult as my true life, which I regretted. I could, after all, have made things a little better and happier in my fantasy life. I was battling against ‘Samba Patey’, which Nick had turned up with a remote control from where he was sitting on the patio. The wine tasted like apple juice that I couldn’t stop drinking to quench my thirst. My larynx was numbed out from the coke. I must pace myself and not bombard them with too much of my sad fantasy life, I thought. I looked down for a while, feeling the music, but my shoes made me sad. I looked under the table at the other shoes on display; the others mostly wore flip-flops, which seemed happier.
Then the thin woman spoke for the first time in ages.
‘But there are other paintings like this going round the suburbs. My cousin’s got some; she’s become a real westie.’
Her boyfriend and the other thin girl sniggered.
‘Westie. What’s that?’ I asked.
‘It’s someone that lives in a daggy part of town and dresses really daggy, and like, I suppose, well … What would you say, Rod?’
‘Common, I suppose. The pommies would say common.’
Oh, please, not the colonial jargon coming from some rich city-boy twat, I thought, stubbing out my cigarette with regret.
‘Yeah, common, you know, white patent shoes, really westie.’
‘Schemer.’
‘What?’
‘I think you mean schemer – that’s what we say in Edinburgh.’
‘Schamer.’ Robin struggled with its pronunciation.
‘Schemer, yeah. So your cousin’s a schemer?’
‘Yeah, she is, and a couple of summers ago some people came round like you and sold her some tacky picture of the Blue Mountains, or something.’
‘Right.’ I overnodded.
‘So, is this an organisation? That’s what Penny’s asking,’ said the boyfriend. Which was a real shame because I was banking on taking all the praise for the paintings and the idea that there must be a market for them out here, away from the city.
‘Yeah, it is an organisation called ART, it’s based in Sydney, and me and the other painters use the studio space they have to paint in, and they supply that and the materials, and we bang them out very quickly – the same eight or ten scenes that are recycled with each group working there. Then we go round trying to sell.’
They looked blank.
‘It’s all a means to an end for the time being.’
That was it. I was spent. It took all my powers of concentration to hammer that out under the coke, which was making me feel increasingly withdrawn and in need of silence from all talk.
This was only the third time I’d taken coke, the night in the Naked Club being the second. The first time I tried it, I was nineteen and worked in a hotel. The head gardener, Dougie, let me try some at the end of my last day. We sat in the greenhouse listening to Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Two Tribes,’ and Jerry, whose slight coke habit I hadn’t noticed until that day, explained how close we were to nuclear war with Russia. Then we hugged and I got on my bike a bit horny and cycled home with great vigour.
It was only now that I noticed the various reactions that different personalities had to the drug. The quietest of the group – the thin girls and Hugo – seemed to become more talkative, whereas Robin and I seemed to quieten down.
‘So, why can’t you use the studio space to paint your own stuff as well as the tacky stuff here?’ asked Hugo.
‘Mmm,’ agreed his wife.
‘Yeah, why don’t you do that?’ said Robin.
‘Yeah, I do.’ I couldn’t concentrate; I was worrying whether I was too young to have a heart attack.
‘Then you wouldn’t have to get your own place to paint,’ Robin finished.
I wanted to correct her. She was confusing everything; it was all wrong.
‘Yeah. I do. I do paint there.’
Robin had taken off her glasses and put on sunglasses even though it was overcast, and was moving with the music. Nick was making a square on the table with matches.
‘Yeah, Kerry, why don’t you do that?’ asked Hugo again, taking over the cocaine preparation.
‘Do what?’
‘Just use the gear at the ART place, or whatever it’s called.’
‘I’m only there because of the shit paintings, aren’t I?’
They looked at me, four of them in sunglasses now. I’d left mine in the car because it was raining and I didn’t think I’d be taking coke with a bunch of strangers.
I went on, ‘If I wasn’t selling this to get money I wouldn’t be needing the money. No wait. I wouldn’t be.’ I started drumming on the table with my fingers as the song built up some pace. ‘I wouldn’t have! I wouldn’t have the place to paint the shit stuff, if I wasn’t doing the job, would I?’
The four with the glasses were laughing at me. The two without glasses weren’t. Would I be like them if I had worn my sunglasses?
‘I get it,’ said Hugo.
‘Well, thank fuck for that,’ I said accidentally, barely able to force a smile.
I had planned a good while ago, during our initial conversation, that I would confess to selling mass-produced, tacky art, and lie about painting it, but would profess to have painted what I considered to be good and sellable art which I also carried about with me. I had settled on the abstract pieces because they were simply less recognisable as shit to most people. Unfortunately, I had now confused myself with my own story, which I was starting to believe – or at least the part about me painting the tacky stuff. I knew the coke was running the show now but I couldn’t stop. I also couldn’t stop with the obsession that I had to sell them a picture. I was fucked for the rest of the day and night, I couldn’t move on to another house in this state. I couldn’t afford not to sell.
‘Hey, Kerry?’ The coke was passed to me once again.
‘What?’ I took it up the right nostril, and planned to do only one more up the left to balance my nose abuse, and then I’d stop. Pleased with my decision and with a self-imposed end in sight, I found some reserve positivity.
‘What?’ I asked again.
Hugo was crippled over laughing and unable to complete his question until he’d got his breath back. ‘You’re a great girl and all that, but we’re not going to buy your shit paintings. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I am,’ said Nick, putting up his hand. I felt instant compassion for him.
‘No way, Nicky boy.’
‘Yeah, I fuckin’ am. Look great in the fuckin’ salon, that unicorn.’
I was stunned into further silence.
‘You fuckin’ cocksucker, Nick,’ laughed Rod.
‘Rod, don’t talk to him like that,’ said Penny, his girlfriend.
‘I don’t mind. I’m used to it. I don’t care.’ Nick stood up, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘How much is it, Cathy? I fucking want it.’ He slammed some notes and loose change on the table.
‘Look, I come here, I drink your wine, you share your coke with me, I can’t charge you. Nope, not right.’ I genuinely meant it, but only because I had convinced myself that I wanted to sell my own work – i.e. the abstracts – rather than the mass
-produced stuff. I hadn’t spoken to Robin for a while, losing her to her trance, so I said, ‘What do you think, Robin?’
I felt, based on nothing, that Robin and I had a rapport.
‘Let him buy it, he wants it. He’s Kylie Minogue’s hairdresser, he’s loaded.’
I liked everything Robin said.
‘I cut her hair once, Cathy, before she was famous,’ protested Nick.
‘Kerry,’ I muttered.
‘ONCE, KERRY!’ He boomed, sticking up one finger.
I was lost now. I was beaten. I would accept defeat and go with the flow. ‘Take the unicorn, it’s yours.’ I swung on my chair, and picked up a pair of sunglasses from the table and put them on without asking.
‘I’ve got …’ He counted his change. ‘One hundred dollars here, but only because my dealer didn’t show. I thought it was you, by the way.’ He touched my shoulder. He was becoming increasingly camp. ‘One hundred bucks and fifty seventy cents. Here, take it.’
I gave him the double thumbs-up, and cocked my head towards the unicorn. He cheered and ran towards it. It didn’t make me happy, though; I wanted to sell my abstract art.
‘What sort of stuff do you paint?’ Robin picked up a camera from the table and began taking shots of me as I talked.
‘Abstract. I’ve got some with me. Do you want to see?’
‘Yeah, go on.’
I went over to the folder and brought out what I considered to be the best two out of the three. I placed them against the wall of the house and stood back. Robin squatted down and looked at them for a while. I poured myself another glass of wine, as it had gone well past the politeness stage by now, and lit up. I walked over to join her, dragging on my cigarette, tapping my fingernail on my tooth and taking it all in, like I was at an opening.
‘Well? Be honest.’
‘Hmmm. There’s not much going on with it – I don’t feel it. But I think I like it.’
The Naked Drinking Club Page 9