‘Too quick to hand out medicines.’
‘Yeh, basically, and I raised it at a practice meeting, remember, and got my head bitten off? Because he’d prescribed ritalin to this kid himself rather than passing him on to a clinic and the guidelines are completely clear you shouldn’t do that.’
They were wandering along, the greenish river flowing more speedily on their left, the landscape open all around. In the distance beyond the river was the little low-lying agglomeration of The Willows with, behind it, the more massy presence of the town.
Although now, he was thinking, maybe it’s a bit more complicated . . .
While in the distance to the right was hazy greyish higher ground, fields, with darker patches of woodland. There was blue sky now, the cloud had disintegrated into puffs, the sun was warm on their cheeks through the chill air and sparkled on the muddy river and here and there on wet bits of the ground.
‘So’ – he carried on – ‘I talked it over with her and said it was entirely reasonable to want to come off the drug. That the dose seemed to me probably too high. And that they should go to the clinic for an expert opinion but also so that a support structure could be put in place. There are parenting skills that can be taught or reinforced. And also really importantly behavioural therapy for the child. Because if the drug isn’t controlling his behaviour then he’s got to learn how to do it for himself.’
You could see the earth was juicy with winter rain. You could see how everything was ready to go shooting up when the heat of the sun switched on. Well crocuses had already, of course, and snowdrops. There must be buds everywhere, waiting to go whoosh. When, what would it be, when the photons went piling in there, bang bang bang bang bang, lots of little explosions, cruise missiles, or actually more like rain, when a raindrop falls on water and bounces up again bigger and the whole gleaming surface of the water wobbles from its energy. There would be a rain of light on all these plants, setting off the chemistry and they would all go whoosh.
‘But they never bloody went. That’s what I realised today. They just stopped taking the medication. They responded to what I said, which was very carefully measured, by just stopping taking it. Which wasn’t what I said at all.’
‘Yeh but . . .’
But Philip was surging on:
‘You can see what the kid’s like now. It might be OK when he’s out here but I dread to think how he behaves in school. Clearly she’s involved with that idiot in the boat and they’re all let’s be natural, medicines are poison.’
‘He wasn’t quite that bad.’
‘Yes he was. Let’s all join hands and say “Om.” Try forming a warm loving relationship with a killer whale. Or MRSA.’
‘I don’t think that was . . .’
‘I know some of what he said was fine. What we all agree about. Use less energy. Go for more nice walks. What I can’t stand is when you go from that to a whole anti-science thing, like when he said that all the enormous endeavour that’s being done by scientists across the world didn’t really matter, what we need to do is learn to love a blade of grass.’
‘My blade of grass was really cute.’
‘That attitude leads to the anti-MMR movement which leads to children dying. I just can’t stand it.’
They were a little way away from one another now. Sue was looking into his face with a concerned, tilted head, appraising eyes. Her gaze slid off him to the ground.
‘Sorry,’ he said. And then: ‘Shall we get a drink?’ The pub sign was just ahead and a path turned off, leading beyond railings to a squat, old building, probably a farmhouse to begin with.
‘OK,’ she said, blankly.
‘Sorry: I need a drink,’ he said. They turned off into the garden behind the railing, hands in their pockets, side by side.
Once they had stepped into the shadowy interior where a few people sat here and there, and had said hello to the sprightly barman or landlord, and ordered a pint of dry cider and – ‘why not?’ – a G&T – ‘actually make that a double’ – and had said what a nice day it was and ‘just going for a walk’; and had, taking their drinks, stepped back out into the sunny chill and chosen a table near the base of a tall, bedraggled pine, they each hooked one leg, then the other, into the conjoined bench-and-table contraption, ending up opposite each other with their knees only about 6 inches distant, their noses a foot-and-a-half apart. He lifted the large cold cylinder and drank, feeling his tongue channel the prickly liquid back to where, gulp after gulp, his mylohyoid contracted and relaxed, his soft palate lifted and fell. She raised her slim, chilly glass and sipped, feeling the sweet, sticky glitter of the liquid fizzle on her tongue.
‘So was it an Art thing,’ he said, wanting to reach out a tendril towards her, to begin to build a bridge, ‘that made you want to go to this’ – hippy airhead, he thought, but instead said: ‘Ash event?’
‘Sort of,’ she said. Then she thought: sod it why not? There was an image inside her of him talking to that mother and it had a sort of buzzing around it which resolved into words such as: in a way it’s lovely that you get so anxious about your patients but you could also listen to me a bit more. And: I’ve got a stressful job too. So she thought: sod it, just tell him, and if he makes a scene who cares? And so she said: ‘You know the Elton Barfitt exhibition.’ She saw uncertainty in his eyes and added: ‘In the autumn. Exactly when you were stressing about Janet Stone and Albert and Adam Hibbert and drug company incentives and the conspiracy to prescribe everyone too much medicine. We had a crisis at work then, the artist we’d planned to exhibit, Abm Al Ahmed, pulled out, and we had to conjure up a new show out of nothing.’
‘Of course I remember. Sorry. Charlotte had the idea of going to those really radical androgynous artists who don’t normally show in galleries.’
‘Elton Barfitt.’
‘Yeh and you were pretty excited about it.’
She was feeling softer towards him now and spoke more gently. ‘That’s right. Only it turned out Elton Barfitt didn’t want to do a show.’
‘I thought you said they did?’
‘No I didn’t. You said something like “how’d it go” and I just said “it went” and you didn’t ask any more so I left it.’
They both thought back to that time. She coming in late, turning, shutting the front door behind her quietly. He slobbing on the sofa, telly on, checking this and that on his phone. She standing in the doorway, undoing the belt of her short black raincoat. Her mouth moving, saying something; he looking up, responding. He standing and moving towards her and reaching out and drawing her into his arms, feeling her chin on his shoulder, kissing her forehead. His sleepiness. Her energy and frustration, the need she felt to find a route to calm and bed, silently, to make a space around what had happened, put it away in a cupboard so she would have at least a chance of sleep. The next morning she had been in a rush as usual and he had been thinking of the day ahead.
‘I got the impression,’ he said, ‘you didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Maybe I didn’t. But I’m telling you now. What actually happened was that Elton Barfitt said no.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked straight across at her face which was looking questioningly into his. ‘So,’ he carried on: ‘What’s going to . . . ?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What does Omar . . . ?’
She looked down for a bit. She stroked the side of her glass with her index finger. Then she looked up frankly and said: ‘Omar doesn’t know.’
‘Doesn’t know what to do either?’
‘No. He doesn’t know that Elton Barfitt said no.’
‘What?’
‘Charlotte told him they said yes.’
‘What? She’s fucking weird that woman! Why did she tell him that?’
Sue felt she wanted to downplay it in the face of his astonishment. She said: ‘To buy time?’
Then she found she wanted to say more. ‘Charlotte, basically Charlotte couldn’t beli
eve it. She couldn’t bring herself to accept that it was true. So, well then also she said that it wouldn’t make any difference. Since Omar wanted to keep himself out of the whole transaction there was no danger he’d find out and, because that was the case’ – she was repeating the argument that Charlotte had put to her – ‘a bit of a delay would make no difference. Because the only alternative was for the gallery to go dark. And Charlotte absolutely doesn’t want that. And neither do I.’
She was looking at him defensively now, wondering if he had understood.
‘But to misrepresent them to your boss . . .’
She felt a scratch of irritation inside her, nails on slate.
‘And,’ he said: ‘Isn’t there, shouldn’t there be publicity? I mean,’ he said, ‘if Omar thinks there’s going to be a show then he’ll want to publicise it; and you can’t publicise it without them finding out.’
Sue said: ‘That’s just it. Charlotte told him that the show had to be kept secret. For the time being.’
‘How’s that gonna . . . ?’
‘I know. I really don’t know how she pulled it across him. But the argument was’ – she laid it out carefully– ‘that, because Elton Barfitt haven’t exhibited in a gallery before, they want to make this one a surprise. So that what we are to do is keep that summer slot as to-be-announced. And then – oh, I think she said that the announcement was itself going to be part of the event, or something.’
‘And he bought it?’
‘I know,’ she said. And then: ‘I think what Charlotte thinks is going to happen is that Elton Barfitt are going to change their mind. I don’t know why she thinks that: they seemed very determined to me.’
‘OK.’
‘So I’m pretty sure, she hasn’t told me this, but I’m pretty sure her plan is, sometime soon, now we’ve left it for a bit, to go back and ask them again, make a last-minute appeal.’
‘Get on her knees and beg.’
‘Yup’ – Sue was feeling cheerier now – ‘because, you know what she’s like, she’s got this obsessive idea that she’s got a sort of special understanding with them, if only she could make them see it.’
‘But’ – something was occurring to Philip: ‘It’s been, what’ – he thought about it – ‘nearly three months since you had that meeting.’
‘I know, and so . . . I’m not really sure how realistic that plan is.’ Sue’s eyes were wandering around the garden. ‘Hence’ – she conjured up a smile – ‘Plan B. Which is, well, what we’d always said officially between ourselves, or unofficially-officially, was that we also needed to work out an alternative. Because actually – well this is what I think, but Charlotte’s not so sure – actually Omar was open to alternatives when we had our crisis meeting back in October. But because I hadn’t had enough time I couldn’t pitch anything in the right way to persuade him. But what I hope is that if I get the chance, with Charlotte’s help, really to put together a killer proposal, then, in a month or two, Charlotte can say: Look Elton Barfitt have pulled out too – sorry! – and we can hit him with this alternative, and he might actually let me do it. So that’s the possibility I’m’ – she had a sudden falling feeling – ‘holding on to.’
‘OK,’ he said, trying to be encouraging: ‘That’s good. That’s something. I mean’ – he said, trying harder – ‘that’s the sort of thing you’ve wanted, isn’t it: that’s what you’ve felt frustrated at not being able to do?’
‘Yes that’s right, and even if this comes to nothing,’ she said, ‘just having to think about it . . . well, actually just having to think about it is exhilarating.’
‘So that’s why you brought me to sit through Ash?’
‘Yeh, pretty much. What I was thinking. Well, you know, it’s the sort of thing I always think. I want there not to be an Artist with a capital A because that stops people really seeing, really sensing what’s in front of them.’
‘Yeh because they’re . . .’
‘They get caught up in the personality, in the body of work. They want to be told what the artist is trying to do.’
‘Instead of just looking for themselves.’
‘Yeh, so anyway, I wanted to do something, do you remember once we had a conversation about EEGs, and ECGs?’
‘ . . .’
‘In the car once. There’d been a crash.’
Philip remembered.
‘So what I’d been thinking anyway,’ Sue pressed on, ‘was that I wanted to do something with those. Amplified heartbeats. Projections of EEGs. So that people become aware of themselves in a new way. Do you see what I mean? So that they are the audience, but they are also the artwork.’
‘OK.’
‘But I was worried that might seem a bit narrow. A bit, well, it’s obviously inward-looking, isn’t it – but I wanted also to try to do something about sensation, about how things come into us the whole time. About this weird way’ – and suddenly it really did seem weird, suddenly her head seemed to stretch and stretch, only it wouldn’t stretch enough, it wouldn’t go transparent – ‘this weird way that everything gets into us. You know, we are in the world; but it is also in us. What we see with our eyes, it is in us. What we hear on the radio, goes into our heads. It’s amazing. I mean’ – she grinned, chuckled, let her voice tumble downwards from the heights of wonder it had soared to – ‘it’s also obvious. It’s everyday. But it’s still amazing.’
Philip was looking at her attentively, admiringly.
‘So actually I think Ash has given me some ideas.’
‘You wanna be careful, though.’
‘Yup.’
‘It was a bit, well, pious, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeh I know, but still basically . . .’
‘And some of it was frankly wrong. Like the picture he said was human skin, it wasn’t human skin at all!’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘No it was a vegetable. A cabbage or something. It was outrageous.’
‘But the point he was making didn’t really depend on . . .’
‘I’m just saying, be careful with it, be careful what you take from him.’
‘Yeh sure.’ She felt a gap was opening again between them. ‘Anyway,’ she said: ‘I’m letting it settle. I’ll see what’s left. It’s all still pretty fluid. And it may not work. And even if it does come together Omar may not like it. And then anyway he may see through Charlotte, and if he does that then I’ll be implicated too and I don’t know how that’ll play out. I simply don’t know.’ There was a sudden change of feeling in her cheeks, the seeping sensation of tears about to come. ‘I mean it could . . . I just don’t know.’
‘You should have told me.’
‘Well, I am telling you. I dunno, I didn’t . . . it wasn’t . . . I didn’t really know what there was to tell.’
‘Well you could have shared your worry about it. You know that’s what’ – he reached a hand across towards one of hers, took it – ‘that’s what . . .’ He smiled. He was looking sentimentally into her eyes.
‘Yeh yeh,’ she said, her unhappiness evaporating: ‘I’ve told you now.’
He was already – worriedly, indulgently – imagining the worst: her coming home, denounced and sacked. He would be there for her. He would take her in his arms. They could both live on his income, easily. He would be solid and she would lean on him.
‘Anyway, fuck it,’ she said. ‘The whole thing is basically angled against everything Omar believes in so if he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it.’
She saw Omar’s face going green, inflating, becoming translucent it was so stretched, until: pop! it had gone, and then the gallery was next to start, going bulbous, growing apple – melon – watermelon – boom – at which flames went up, the punkest possible hairstyle of flames, iridescent strands shooting, arcing, the flames now darkening, becoming turbid, flexing like muscles, tawny like the mane of a lion. And away from it all she walked, alone. She saw herself, a tiny figure, dressed in black, the explosive light behind her. The ed
ges of her squeezed and blurred by the light like that boy she had seen against the sky.
‘But maybe,’ she said ‘he won’t get it. Maybe . . . it’ll all . . . be . . . fine.’
She was swinging off the bench, standing up bouncily; she spun so she was facing towards him: ‘Dunno!’
She took a step backwards away from him. Feeling pulled away from him by the work and the uncertainty that lay ahead she sent a smile out towards him, trying to lasso him with well-meaningness and warmth. ‘Come on!’ – she cried.
He began levering himself out of the bench-and-table. He put his thumb inside his pint glass, pressed it against the sticky surface as he stretched his fingers down towards her little glass of ex-G&T. But on the edge of his field of vision he could see her still walking backwards away from him, so he decided not to take the glasses back in. He left them on the table and trotted after her. Catching up with her he reached for her hand, and their shoulders bumped, and for a moment his arm was around her, and then they were holding hands again.
They made their way out through the gate and shortcutted through a clump of apple trees where the ground was tussocky. Then they were on the path beside the river again, the landscape open all around, the sky beginning to tinge with evening as the look of the world darkened and flattened: it was as though the atmosphere were sucking its colours from the ground. Along the river, light puddled and wobbled in a million metamorphic pools on the oily-looking water. The birds had quietened and there was no breeze; only the gentle oceanic roar of the ring-road a mile away. They came to a lock, wider than the one upstream, with a narrow weir beside it where the river poured shiningly in a fast unchanging arc which broke into bubbles and squabbles and swirls and splashes at its foot. Chill prickles of spray touched their cheeks as they crossed the wide flat iron bridge above it.
‘This was the line of a railway!’ – Philip announced.
‘Was it?’
‘Look at it.’
Sue saw the banked-up path that continued from the bridge ahead of them through the meadow.
The World Was All Before Them Page 10