by Jaq Hazell
“It’s not ready.” Flood takes the paper from Marcus, but he moves too quickly and knocks his hip on a table laden with paints. He’s in pain and unsteady on his feet. Marcus reaches out to lend his support.
“You seem a little off today, Jack.”
“Nothing is ready.”
Drake interjects: “I understand that it’s work in progress. The thing is that you whet my appetite that time before when I came over.”
Marcus looks surprised. “You’ve been here before?”
Flood grips the back of the calico-covered chair. He looks grey and nauseous.
“Are you all right?” Drake asks.
Flood nods but too much – it’s unconvincing and he looks a mess, dressed in paint-splattered, low-slung jeans and a threadbare jumper. He rubs at his eyes. “I’m not sleeping.” He grips the back of the chair.
“It doesn’t normally affect you like this. Is there anything I should know? Jack never sleeps,” Marcus tells Drake. “You wouldn’t believe how many of my artists work strange hours.”
“I guess creativity is not a nine-to-five occupation,” Drake says.
“There are plenty of artists who only work by daylight,” Flood says. “Painters want the natural light.”
“You know, I would love to see your latest work,” Drake says.
Flood stands up shakily. “Bear with me.”
Camera cuts to post-viewing. Drake and Marcus are sitting on the retro leather sofa.
Drake nods his head. “I can honestly say, I didn’t see that coming.”
“You never cease to amaze me, Jack,” Marcus says. “Jack? Where are you?”
Drake is preoccupied as he surveys a pile of prints and sketches.
Marcus seizes the moment. “What do you think, Nicholas?”
Drake looks sharply at Marcus. “It’s got my name on it.”
Marcus nods. “You can rest assured, that if anyone gets it, it’ll be you.”
“What are you saying? Is this a money issue?”
“Jack’s not keen to sell at the moment. He’s too attached to it. I’ll talk to him.” Marcus looks around. “Where has he got to?”
Off camera, there is rapping at a door (the bedroom or bathroom? It’s unclear).
“Jack, are you okay in there?” A scuffle can be heard.
When Marcus returns, he is frowning. “I’m not going to get any joy today,” he says. “Give me a few days, Nicholas, and I’ll get back to you.”
“Is Jack all right?”
“He’s a little fragile at the moment, a few personal issues, he’ll come through.”
“Well, I hope so,” Drake says. “I’d best be off. You’ll let me know.”
“I’ll let you know.” They shake hands and Drake leaves.
Flood reappears. He traverses the studio, kicks at the rubbish, and flops down into the calico-covered chair.
“What is it, Jack, what’s bothering you?” Marcus asks.
“There’s something I’ve seen that I need to react to in a sort of semi-public conversation through art, if you like.”
“Very well.” Marcus pats Flood’s back. “You’ll find a way, and it’ll be magnificent, I’m sure.”
Flood forces himself out of the chair and starts to rifle through the rubbish.
“What are you looking for?”
“My Bible – have you seen it?”
“You’re not still doing all that nonsense?” Marcus makes a face. “It’s time I went. I won’t watch that.” He lets himself out, shaking his head as he goes, while Flood continues to scrabble through the chaos.
Thirty-six
The house was a tip: cigarette butts from a long-forgotten party were buried within the shag-pile on the stairs, and dirty crockery filled the kitchen. I wanted my deposit back – fat chance, unless I cleared up. I’d need some boxes. Try the corner shop.
Everyone had left apart from me. My folks would arrive later on as they had further to come. There was no reason to stay any longer. We had received our results a couple of days before, pinned up on the noticeboard outside Mike Manners’ office.
I’d walked down with Kelly. “Good luck,” I said as we approached.
“Yeah, good luck.”
It took a moment before we both registered.
“A 2:2,” Kelly said.
“Same,” I said, ‘and after all that work.”
“Congratulations.” Mike Manners came up behind us. We turned and looked at him nonplussed. “Aren’t you pleased?” he asked.
“It’s crap,” Kelly said.
“I’m sorry you feel like that.” He smiled weakly, as he shifted from foot to foot. “The show went well, don’t you think? We sold quite a few pieces and there’s still London, you might get lucky down there.”
“I doubt it,” Kelly said. We walked away and sat on the steps by the exit. “I can’t believe Beth got a first,” Kelly said.
“I know, bloody typical. And after all that hard work...”
Kelly got out her phone. “I’m gonna call my mum. I want to leave tomorrow.”
“Oh no, stay for the weekend – at least?”
I didn’t want it to end. I had nothing to go on to, or rather back to, and wanted to remain in Nottingham as long as I could but Kelly was having none of it.
The following day, we all helped Kelly and her mum load up the family car with three years’ worth of accumulated possessions and waved goodbye to Kelly Wiseman, BA Honours, who no longer wanted to be an artist.
It felt strange without her. We’d shared the top floor for two years. I entered her vacated room and sat on the floor in a pool of light, enjoying the warmth on my skin. She’d left her pine shelves. I guessed she wasn’t planning on needing anything so cheap in future. There were a couple of postcards from art galleries – a Picasso line drawing of a minotaur and a sunny but smudgy painting of two figures – one playing pan pipes while the other stared mesmerised by his own reflection. I peeled it off the wall and turned it over: ‘Ken Kiff, Echo and Narcissus, Sequence 81 1977’. I like that.
Kelly had also left a poster of Louise Bourgeois’ giant metal spider Blu-Tacked to the chimney breast. Essence of Kelly was still in the room. It was hard to believe she’d gone; but gone she had, and soon the others left too: loading up their parents’ cars while Spencer had Graham come round with a van.
No one cleared up though. The kitchen sink and worktops were piled high with unwashed crockery and the bin was overflowing with rotting debris. Did no one else care about the deposit or were they all wise to the likelihood our fat, slimy, money-grabbing landlord wouldn’t pay back a penny whatever?
Ever the naïve optimist, I walked to the corner shop to get some cardboard boxes in order to clean up. I squinted in the sunlight. I didn’t have my sunglasses, and neither did the albino girl with over-curled hair who sat on the wall at the crossroads. I tried not to look, but she fascinated me, sitting there in hot, shiny black clothes on a day like that.
“No cardboard boxes,” the gruff shopkeeper said. “We have bin liners.”
Of course he does. He can charge for those.
As I walked out, the guy in the third-floor flat next to the shop made his usual ‘psst’ sound. I kept walking, tucking the bin liners under my arm – I didn’t want him to see what I’d bought. I didn’t want him to know anything about me.
Back at the crossroads, the albino was still there, sitting on the wall, kicking her feet out. I sneaked another glance. Her jacket and miniskirt looked like PVC, as though she’d already been wrapped in bin liners.
In the kitchen, I tipped all the crap into one of the black sacks. Plate after plate of mouldy chicken bones and the shortest cigarette butts possible. The plates went in too. They weren’t worth saving, though I doubted the thin, poor-quality sack would be strong enough to hold them.
Slug’s room was the only one left locked – probably a good thing. I imagined piles of porn, that nasty brown polyester sleeping bag and the lingering stench of his maggot
feet.
I need a shower. I was so lethargic, hung-over, I suppose.
I stripped and climbed in behind the mildewed plastic curtain and thought about the night before. We’d gone to Zoo: Spencer, Tamzin, Graham and me.
Zoo, a huge club on two floors, wasn’t as busy as usual, as so many people had already left. One of Tamzin’s exes was there though. James – a handsome but dull law student was straight over, making a play for her. Tam didn’t seem to mind, though she kept making faces whenever he wasn’t looking.
I sat drinking and talking with the others, and more friends joined us but somehow Spencer and I splintered off. He knew I was leaving the following day, as was he (though he was only moving a matter of streets away).
“What are you planning to do next?” he asked.
I wished I could say I was staying. “I’ve got to go home, but I plan to move to London as soon as I can. What about you?”
“I’ve got a place with Graham, off Forest Road.”
“What about the college show in London? Will you go?”
He shook his head. “I’m through with the whole college thing.”
I nodded in agreement. “It seems weird it’s all over. I’ll miss it – well, not all of it, but some things.” I meant him and he knew it, because after a moment’s silence we kissed. It felt right. Why did it take so long to get to this? Few people were around, of course – no one in the way for once. We drank and talked and drank some more.
“Shall we go?” I said, and we walked back to the house we’d shared for two years, up to my room at the top where we lay down together and he touched me tenderly as if it were an act of worship rather than merely two friends saying goodbye.
The following morning we did it all again. I like him. He likes me. It’s too late.
I gathered up my clothes. “I’ve got to finish packing.” I edged out of the bed.
I’d taken down my artwork and half-packed a couple of boxes and a suitcase of clothes but there were still piles of books, files, art equipment and other rubbish that had to be dealt with. “I can’t believe how much stuff I’ve got.”
“You’ll sort it,” he said.
A car horn sounded.
Spencer went to the window. “It’s Graham – he’s got the van for my stuff.”
I stared at Spencer’s tall, strong, naked frame.
“Stop looking at me like that.” He grinned.
The horn went again, and Spencer forced open the sash and waved down. “Give me a minute.” He pulled on his jeans, and shook out his T-shirt. “I’m going to have to go.” He stroked the back of his shaved head. His soft brown eyes glanced around my shabby, part-packed room. “When are you coming back?”
“I’m not,” I said. And he looked away, towards the rectangle of bright light at the window, and then back into the shady room, a soft, sad smile on his lips.
“I’ve got your number,” he said.
We kissed again and I followed him down the three flights of stairs and helped him load up the van, ready to go.
Thirty-seven
The boredom of Bumblefuck hit me again. Stowe-on-Sea is somewhere safe you retire to if you can’t afford anywhere more interesting, but even there I couldn’t avoid Flood because thanks to his relationship with pop star/style icon Pax, he was news.
They had been photographed taking drugs together in the VIP lounge at top London club Fabric. In a grainy black and white shot, he could be seen smoking a glass pipe with Pax next to him, wearing oversized shades and a spaced-out smile.
The story developed and two days later, Flood was a TV news item: ‘Artist Jack Flood is charged with possession of class A drugs’. And there he was, dressed in black and looking wan outside a large stone building, Thames Magistrates Court, while Marcus Hedley in a cream suit guided him down the court steps, and through a scrum of waiting photographers.
“Jack, over here,” someone shouts.
“Where do you go from here, Mr Flood?” a reporter asks.
Flood puts his hand up in front of his face and, jostled by the crowd, momentarily disappears from sight.
“Is it true you’re going into rehab, Jack?” a journalist asks.
“Mr Flood will not be making any comment today, thank you.” Marcus Hedley tries to wave the press pack away.
“Do you believe the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom, Mr Flood?”
“I said no comment, thank you,” says Marcus Hedley, guiding Flood into a waiting car, and he is driven away.
Thirty-eight
Mike Manners called. I was out at the time, walking the dog along the beach thinking about Jenny as I always do whenever I’m near water.
Mum took the call. “He wants you to contact him as soon as possible.”
I imagined him in his light-filled office next to the studio, cowboy boots up on the desk. Fearing the worst, I took the handset to the dining room and dialled.
“I have some good news,” he said. “We’ve sold your work.” There hadn’t been a whisper of interest during the college show, but once it moved to London there’d been an approach from a third party. “Most unexpected,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, affronted.
“We do sell a fair amount of work, but it’s unprecedented that anyone should want to buy a student’s entire output.”
“They want all eleven pieces?” I pictured the eleven embroidered works hung in series at the degree show.
“They want everything: your sketchbooks and preliminary work as well as your finished pieces. It’s remarkable – not even Graham’s work sold so well.”
“Everything?” I smiled as I said it. “Who is it?”
“No idea. An intermediary made the approach. There has been some haggling, so I assume he’s a dealer working on behalf of a client. The buyer wishes to remain anonymous.”
“Why?”
“Religious reasons – I’m told the works will be shipped to Dubai and must be handled in a low-key way due to the suggestive nature of the work.”
It was weird. Who is this creep who can’t even admit to liking what he likes?
Mike said, “It’s not unusual for buyers to remain anonymous, especially when collectors are bidding at auction.”
“It’s hardly a bidding war.”
Mike laughed. “You haven’t asked about price?”
It seemed beside the point, but of course I did want to know.
Finally, I’d received some validation for my work. I’d sold something, or rather everything. I am an artist. I can truly call myself an artist.
More importantly, the money meant I could escape from Stowe-on-Sea, and join Tamzin in London. She’d been staying with an aunt in Putney up to that point. But, as soon as I’d been paid we went in search of a flat together and eventually signed a short-hold tenancy agreement on a small two-bedroom basement flat down that curl of slimy steps, opposite a sauna/massage parlour in Hammersmith.
Our ‘Garden Flat’ was half-underground. There’d be no more watching people as I had from my top-floor window in Nottingham. From our barred front window I was limited to seeing only the legs of passers-by.
In need of a steady income I found a waitress job at Chihuahua’s, a Mexican-themed restaurant off Regent Street. I hoped it wouldn’t be too taxing and that the shifts would allow me enough time and energy to devote to my art.
Sunday, on my first day off from Chihuahua’s, all I could hear was Tamzin and her latest boyfriend Greg going at it. I’ve got to get out of here. I dressed: jeans, T-shirt and Converse, and caught the tube into central London.
London, by the river at Embankment, is brilliant: Big Ben, the London Eye, the Savoy, St Paul’s and the Gherkin, all shiny above the greenish brown water. I passed skateboarders, a man with a dreadlocked beard sitting on the ground with an upturned hat at his feet and his hand on a large brown dog, as well-fed seagulls flew above the river. Sunlight glistened on the water and as always I thought of Jenny, because to me she is forever in every river,
pond and sea.
Tate Modern – power station turned art monolith was my destination. I took the escalator up to the galleries. There had been a recent, much-publicised rehang, and contemporary works jostled for attention alongside the established modern greats.
No one can like every work of art. This is where people get confused. They assume that if they don’t like one contemporary artist then they can’t like any, but it’s not like that. Not every piece will speak to you, but if you look at a variety of work and give it all a chance, something will resonate.
The dreamy blue of a Miró attracted me first, then I moved on to a painting of a dark, foreboding wood with a childlike bird: Forest and Dove, 1927, Max Ernst.
The next room housed violent Bacons and Picasso’s Nude Woman with Necklace 1968 with all her dangerous, swallowing orifices. And then there was Dora Maar – Picasso’s Weeping Woman 1937. He made her cry, I thought.
Marlene Dumas’ fresh and challenging watery paintings had their own room and in the corner next to her female nude, Lead White 1997, hung a long dark curtain, through which people passed. I presumed it was video art and went in and sat on one of the box stools next to a group of young Japanese women, as the night-time exterior of an English urban street with redbrick terraced houses filled the wall-sized screen.
The camerawork is fast and shaky as if the artist/filmmaker is running, while the soundscape of someone breathing becomes heavier. And the back-to-back terraces continue, until the camera takes a turn into a back alley and then another and another. They criss-cross and appear as confusing to the cameraperson as to the viewer.
The breathing is shallow and panicky, as if someone is being pursued or at least thinks they are. There is discarded rubbish: a shopping trolley, bin bags ripped open by animals, spewing nappies, beer bottles, plastic bags – and an old wheelbarrow, abandoned stepladder and branches cut from a tree.
Back out into the open streets, and the breather gets some relief. It’s another seemingly endless row of redbrick terraces. It’s nightmarish – a sense of entrapment. The camera moves on and the streets become familiar as the camera lingers on a short brick wall with a spray of white graffiti and bricks falling from one end. It’s the waiting wall – the waiting-for-a-trick wall, on my old street in Nottingham. I hold my breath as my heart pounds inside my chest.